Illustrator

How to spell illustrator

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce illustrator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does illustrator mean?

1. nounA person who creates drawings or pictures, especially to accompany a text or product.

Illustrator in a sentence

• The publisher hired a freelance illustrator to draw the cover.

• Every children's book lists the author and the illustrator on its title page.

Where does illustrator come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb illustrare, which meant to light up, to throw light upon, or to make bright, formed from the prefix in- (here meaning upon or into) and lustrare, meaning to make bright or to purify. In classical use the verb carried the sense of bringing something out of obscurity into the light, both literally and figuratively, so that to illustrate an idea was to illuminate it for the mind. English took on the verb illustrate in the sixteenth century, and by the eighteenth century the meaning had narrowed toward the modern idea of clarifying a text with pictures. The agent noun illustrator, one who provides such pictures, was built on the Latin pattern with the -or ending that English regularly uses for a doer. The same lustr root that means brightness still glows inside the everyday word lustre, which is a useful reminder that the tricky double l comes from the original Latin il- prefix, not from a doubled middle.

How the word is built

• il- (variant of in-: into, upon)
• lustr (from lustrare: to light up, make bright)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -or (agent: one who does)