sitter
noun
a person who sits.
sitter
1 American
[sit-er]
/ ˈsɪt ər /
noun
-
sitters
plural
-
a person who sits.
-
a brooding hen.
-
a person who stays with young children while the parents go out; baby-sitter.
-
a person who provides routine or custodial care temporarily or part-time, as for an elderly person or a pet whose owner is on vacation.
-
Slang. the buttocks; rump.
Sitter
2
American
[sit-er]
/ ˈsɪt ər /
noun
sitter
1
British
/ ˈsɪtə /
noun
-
a person or animal that sits
-
a person who is posing for his or her portrait to be painted, carved, etc
-
a broody hen or other bird that is sitting on its eggs to hatch them
-
(in combination) a person who looks after a specified person or thing for someone else
flat-sitter
-
short for baby-sitter
-
anyone, other than the medium, taking part in a seance
-
anything that is extremely easy, such as an easy catch in cricket
Sitter
2
British
/ ˈsɪtə /
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sitter
Middle English word dating back to 1300–50; see origin at sit 1, -er 1
Explanation
Don’t squash the children! A sitter can be anyone who sits — in a chair, on the floor, or anywhere else — but it’s often short for babysitter. They don’t actually sit on the babies, though. We hope. In addition to the person who sits or models for an oil painter, a sitter can also be someone who watches children as a paid job. It's short for babysitter: "Good news, guys, we're having the nice sitter tonight, the one who lets us stay up past bedtime!" The origin of sitter and babysitter isn't completely clear, but some experts guess the sit part comes from birds sitting on their eggs before they hatch.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
His converted penalty was then merely a consolation in a 3-1 loss to hosts Russia before he missed a sitter as Egypt suffered a humiliating loss to Saudi Arabia.
From BBC ● Jun. 22, 2026
A plant sitter who eats her clients’ plants while insisting she’s very good at her job.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2026
Caley could not take time off immediately, so the two were searching for a last-minute sitter.
From MarketWatch ● May 13, 2026
In last year's Hundred her captain at Southern Brave, Georgia Adams, let her be her dog sitter - not a role you'd give to every teenager.
From BBC ● May 10, 2026
Henri the painter was occupied, for Holman’s Department Store had employed not a flag-pole sitter but a flag-pole skater.
From "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck
Zakrzewski worked as a professional nanny, branding himself as “the original Sitter Buddy” on his website.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 18, 2023
Their paper 'Static Black Binaries in de Sitter Space' is published in the journal Physical Review Letters and reviewed as a Viewpoint article.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 19, 2023
Bennett made "The Holiday Sitter" for all audiences, describing it as "just a story about Christmas . . . It just happened to have two men as the leads, versus a man and a woman."
From Salon ● Dec. 11, 2022
Also, in AdS, empty space has negative curvature, whereas the empty de Sitter space of our universe is mostly flat.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 30, 2022
Our way led through the valley of the Sitter, a stream fed by the Sentis Alps, and spanned by a bridge hundreds of feet above the water.
From Scenes in Switzerland by American Tract Society
We got cat sitters, we both took days off from work, the whole thing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2026
Chants of "Let's go Knicks" rippled through the dense crowd, made up of some who paid hundreds of dollars for line sitters to wait overnight and save them a space to watch the procession.
From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026
There are hunters and prey, parasites and hosts, swimmers and sitters, and there are those with varied diets while others photosynthesize.
From Science Daily ● May 7, 2026
Instead of dating his sitters, Gainsborough fit them into the landscape of England eternal.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 4, 2026
These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long.
From "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
