facilitator

American  

[fuh-sil-i-tey-ter] / fəˈsɪl ɪˌteɪ tər /

noun

• facilitators
  plural

1. a person or thing that facilitates.

2. a person responsible for leading or coordinating the work of a group, as one who leads a group discussion.

   Each committee will meet with its facilitator.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• facilitators
  plural

Etymology

Origin of facilitator

First recorded in 1815–25; facilitate + -or ²

Explanation

If you're a facilitator, you're someone who helps other people get things done. I don't think we can finish this without a facilitator to guide us through the final phase. Many Romance languages have a word descended from the Latin facile, "easy." If you're familiar with any of those, then facilitator will be easy for you to remember. All sorts of people need someone to who makes a process easier. During a negotiation, for example, the parties may call in a facilitator to help iron out their differences. If you've got a friend who can't seem to get their physics homework done, you can be a facilitator just by holding their hand through the toughest problem sets.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

facilitator facilitators

That kicked off talks that resulted in the Singapore summit, with Seoul serving as a key facilitator between Washington and Pyongyang.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026

Suozzi is a frequent facilitator of Fellowship network-building, including recently in El Salvador, where he and Moolenaar praised the president, Nayib Bukele, who joined The Fellowship’s ring of prayer breakfasts.

From Salon ● May 29, 2026

This led her to open up her farm for non-riding visits to see the donkeys and she trained as an equine assisted learning facilitator.

From BBC ● May 16, 2026

The live support is better than I expected—a robust conversation with a talented facilitator asking good follow-ups.

From Slate ● May 10, 2026

Operating out of a gleaming-white training room, Frenchy stocked every manner of weight-loss facilitator, including electric blankets, infrared lamps, electric light cabinets, baking machines, “violet-rays,” vibrating contraptions, and rubber sleeping bags and sheets.

From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand

During group activities, cocktail hours and meetings in small cohorts of two or three attendees and facilitators, participants sought insight and support from each other about starting new businesses and career shifts.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

"What the Fayeds ran was a trafficking operation -- one that required a network of facilitators, institutional access, and sustained cover," she told AFP.

From Barron's ● May 7, 2026

The facilitators often have exceptional literary resumes; many are novelists and hold PhDs in literature.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 28, 2026

At every stage of that journey, smugglers or facilitators will take their share of the fee from other brokers across Europe, having been provided with a code specific to that particular transaction.

From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2026

After the introductions, we sat in a circle so that the different facilitators could tell us about themselves.

From "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah

Related Words

• coordinator
• designer
• developer
• promoter