assistant
Americannoun
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assistants
plural
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a person who assists or gives aid and support; helper.
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a person who is subordinate to another in rank, function, etc.; one holding a secondary rank in an office or post.
He was assistant to the office manager.
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something that aids and supplements another.
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a faculty member of a college or university who ranks below an instructor and whose responsibilities usually include grading papers, supervising laboratories, and assisting in teaching.
adjective
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assisting; helpful.
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serving in an immediately subordinate position; of secondary rank.
an assistant coach.
noun
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a person who assists, esp in a subordinate position
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( as modifier )
assistant manager
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See shop assistant
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of assistant
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English assistent, from Latin assistent-, stem of assistēns “standing by,” present participle of assistere “to stand by, help”; see assist
Explanation
An assistant is someone that is there to help. If you work 80 hours a week, you might want to think about hiring a personal assistant to pick up your dry cleaning. The word assistant typically refers to someone who offers assistance. However, in certain professional situations, assistant can mean on a level below, as in "the Assistant District Attorney reports to the District Attorney." Not surprisingly, an assistant provides assistance. However, unlike a slave or an indentured servant, an assistant is paid for his work.
Vocabulary lists containing assistant
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -ant, -ent
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Amanpour began working for CNN in 1983 as an assistant on the international news desk, and went on to become one of the network's best-known correspondents, often reporting on conflicts and wars.
From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026
El-Sayed left a position as an assistant professor at Columbia University to work in public health, where he won awards for his success in protecting children’s health from environmental pollution.
From Salon ● Oct. 19, 2026
For more than six years, I was an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami.
From Slate ● Oct. 19, 2026
Parties can’t begin until a resident assistant inspects the scene to ensure requirements are met—like offering a proportional amount of food if alcohol is served.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 18, 2026
The vet assistant plopped him onto the scale and held her hands on either side of his shivering body without touching, trying to keep him in place.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Agents can live up to that name and be good organizational assistants, rather than souped-up search engines that can talk back to you.
From Slate ● Oct. 14, 2026
AI virtual assistants like “Pippin the PIP Benefits Support Worker” help fill in the forms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
As OpenAI showed off its latest AI assistants in San Francisco last week, protesters outside — some dressed as killer robots —demanded it keep AI away from the military.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
Manus is an agent tool that can carry out real-world tasks for users -- currently a hot sector in global tech, with AI labs racing to release personal assistants.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
Thyon Nero had assistants to perform such tasks for him.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
