Publicist
nounA person whose job is to generate favourable publicity and manage the public image of a client.
How to spell publicist
9 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce publicist
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does publicist mean?
- nounA person whose job is to generate favourable publicity and manage the public image of a client.
Publicist in a sentence
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The actor hired a publicist to handle interviews before the film opened.
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A skilled publicist can place a story in three national papers in a single day.
Where does publicist come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word grew out of public, which English took in the late 1300s from the Latin publicus, meaning 'of the people' or 'belonging to the state', a form influenced by populus, the Latin word for 'the people'. The suffix -ist, from the Greek -istes by way of Latin and French, marks a person who does or practises something. Publicist first appeared in English in the eighteenth century, borrowed from the French publiciste, and originally meant a writer or expert on public law and current affairs. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the sense narrowed and shifted toward its modern meaning: someone whose job is to win favourable attention in the press for a client. The spelling trap is the quiet middle: the -lic- is followed by -ist, not -est, and the c keeps its soft 's' sound.
How the word is built
- public (open to all, of the people)
- -ist (person who practises)
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