Educator

How to spell educator

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce educator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does educator mean?

1. nounA person whose work is teaching or training others, especially as a profession.

Educator in a sentence

• The conference brought together every educator working in the district.

• As a lifelong educator, she had taught three generations of students.

Where does educator come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb educare, meaning 'to bring up, rear, or train', which was closely tied to educere, 'to lead out' or 'draw forth', built from ex- 'out' and ducere 'to lead'. The agent noun educator in Latin simply meant a person who rears or instructs a young person. English adopted the term in the seventeenth century, borrowing it directly from the Latin form rather than reshaping it through French, which is why the ending stayed as -ator rather than the -er we use for many homegrown agent nouns. The same ducere root that means 'to lead' surfaces in a whole family of English words, including 'conduct', 'produce', and 'introduce', all of which carry the buried sense of leading or drawing something along. The spelling trap sits in that final syllable: it is -tor, not -ter, even though the ear hears a neutral schwa.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-: out)
• duc (from ducere: to lead)
• -ator (agent noun: one who does)