facilitator
Americannoun
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facilitators
plural
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a person or thing that facilitates.
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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.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
Vocabulary lists containing facilitator
A Long Way Gone
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This Week in Words: June 11 - 15, 2018
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Half a World Away
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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:
Yet Parker, a conflict facilitator, says Americans aren’t facing conflict enough.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The third-year point guard has worked to be a better communicator, facilitator and defender this summer and at training camp.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026
Additionally, we had a rare opportunity with this round of coverage to speak directly to an identity theft victim and an active facilitator.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 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
The workshop facilitator, Josue Guzman, noticed that Richard stood out from the other young participants.
From "The 57 Bus" by Dashka Slater
"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
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
Carol recalled that its facilitators were some of the worst people she’s ever known, “and they smiled all the time, just like you,” she tells one of them.
From Salon ● Nov. 26, 2025
And employees at CVS Health have access to virtual peer-support groups led by menopause-trained facilitators.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2025
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
Definitions 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.
