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Ever since I participated in the ELL, I've been wondering why red mark ( indicating it is misspelled ) is always attached to the word "answerer" which, according to our own language dictionary, is the correct word.

回答者 <回答> ( answerer ) an answerer;

What is the correct term? who makes the answer in English?

It looks like I am a fool when I think I ask this kind of question now but thank you for your support.

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Most users here won't be able to access the full (subscription-only) Oxford English Dictionary, so here's a screenshot of the relevant entry...

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Note that the one thing you don't see in that definition is person who answers a question.


As pointed out by @sharur above, software "spellcheckers" aren't a reliable guide to what is or isn't "valid". But in this particular case, they do accurately reflect the fact that native speakers don't like the "regularly generated" noun forms answerer and questioner. Unfortunately, most of us don't much like the alternatives (respondent, querent) either.

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A technical (as in technology-based) answer: a basic spell checker is not based on "rules of English" but on a list. If "answerer" is in that program's list, it is considered correctly spelled; otherwise it is considered misspelled. (Some are more advanced, to catch things like repeated words...)

If you are getting a "misspelling" indicator, it means that the word in question is not in that list, which may or may not (i.e. the lists are not perfect, especially with regards to rarer words).

For what it is worth "answerer" doesn't get a misspelling red line for me, on any of the platforms I have tried it on since seeing this question.

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    Thank you very much for your additional info. Kindly remember that I never saw any native speaker used the word "answerer" to refer to the person who made the answer but only me. Anyway thank you again.
    – user17814
    Jul 24, 2019 at 17:16

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