Word.ws English Dictionary

masker

/ˈmæskə(ɹ)/

masker verb: to render giddy or senseless.

Verb

masker (third-person singular simple present maskers, present participle maskering, simple past and past participle maskered)

  1. (dialectal, transitive) To render giddy or senseless
    • To masker their troubled heads the more, hee assaileth them with a great shout and maine violence.1659, T[itus] Livius [i.e., Livy], “(please specify the book number)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Romane Historie […], London: […] W. Hunt, for George Sawbridge, […], →OCLC
    • He is so, for he is not one that sets forth to the wars with great resolutions and hopes, and returns with maskered fears, and despairs; neither is he like those that take more care, and are more industrious to get gay clothes, and fine feathers, [...]2000, Paul Salzman, Early Modern Women's Writing
  2. (dialectal, intransitive) To be bewildered.
  3. (dialectal, transitive) To choke; stifle.
  4. (dialectal, transitive) To decay; rust.

Noun

masker (plural maskers)

  1. One who wears a mask; one who appears in disguise at a masquerade or wears a mask in a ritual.
    • But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away […].1842, Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
    • Like the men's society, the corporate consciousness of women and their respected place in the political body is represented by a masked spirit. This sowei (masker), like all the officials of the society, represents the corporate body of women and retains the authority to levy fines and punish women...2012, L. Day, Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries, →ISBN
  2. That which masks (noise in a signal, etc.).

Proper noun capitalized: Masker

Masker (plural Maskers)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of masker

Forms of masker

Verb
third-person singular presentmaskers
present participlemaskering
past participlemaskered
pastmaskered
Noun
pluralmaskers
Proper noun
pluralMaskers

Origin of masker

From Middle English *maskeren, malskren (“to bewilder”) (compare Middle English bimalscren (“to bewitch”)), from Old English *malscrian (attested in derivative malscrung (“enchantment, charm”)), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *malskaz (“haughty”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mel- (“to beat, crush, grind”). Cognate with Middle Dutch malsch (“headstrong, zealous”). More at mask.

From mask + -er.

Words formed from masker

Questions about masker

What does masker mean?
Masker means to render giddy or senseless.
What part of speech is masker?
Masker can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce masker?
Masker is pronounced /ˈmæskə(ɹ)/.
What is the past tense of masker?
The past tense of masker is maskered.

Words near masker in the dictionary

  1. Maskelyne
  2. Maskelyne Islands
  3. Maskelynes
  4. maskelynite
  5. maskelynites
  6. masker
  7. maskerade
  8. maskerader
  9. maskeraders
  10. maskerades
  11. maskered

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: masker (page history and authors); Masker (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-masker.wav.

Cite this entry: “masker.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/masker. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.