Councillor

How to spell councillor

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce councillor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does councillor mean?

1. nounAn elected member of a local government council.

Councillor in a sentence

• The local councillor voted to approve the new cycle lane.

• Residents emailed their councillor about the broken streetlights.

Where does councillor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on council, which descends from the Latin concilium, meaning an assembly or meeting of people who have been summoned together. That noun was formed from com-, meaning 'together', and calare, a verb meaning 'to call' or 'to summon', so a council was literally a 'calling together' of people. Council reached English through Anglo-Norman French in the 1100s and 1200s, and the agent form for a member of such a body, councillor, developed later by adding the -or suffix that marks the person who does something. The doubled l in the British and Canadian spelling preserves the older convention of doubling a final l before a suffix, which is exactly why it differs from the single-l American 'councilor'. Be careful not to confuse it with 'counsellor', a near-identical word for an adviser, which comes instead from the Latin consilium, meaning 'advice' or 'deliberation'.

How the word is built

• council (from Latin concilium: an assembly called together)
• -or (agent suffix), with the l doubled in British and Canadian spelling

British and American spelling

Councillor is the British spelling. American English spells it councilor.

Words that sound like councillor

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• counsellor: A person trained to give guidance or therapy on personal, psychological, or practical problems.
• counselor: A person trained to give guidance or support on personal, educational, or emotional matters.