janitor
Americannoun
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a person employed in an apartment house, office building, school, etc., to clean the public areas, remove garbage, and do minor repairs; caretaker.
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Archaic. a doorkeeper or porter.
verb (used without object)
noun
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the caretaker of a building, esp a school
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a person employed to clean and maintain a building, esp the public areas in a block of flats or office building; porter
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of janitor
First recorded in 1575–85; from Latin jānitor “doorkeeper,” equivalent to jāni- (combining form of jānus “doorway, covered passage”) + -tor -tor
Compare meaning
How does janitor compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A janitor is someone whose job is cleaning and maintaining a building. If your school always looks clean and orderly, be sure to thank the janitor. Another name for a janitor is a custodian, or in Britain, a caretaker. This job involves cleaning and caring for a school, hospital, apartment building, or workplace. Janitors may be responsible for cleaning bathrooms, hallways, and other common areas. Sometimes janitors will also sweep sidewalks, shovel snow, or do other outdoor maintenance. In the 16th century, a janitor was a "doorkeeper," from the Latin ianitor, "doorkeeper or porter," and the root ianua, "door."
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:
I think I've had one interview for a janitor role.
From BBC ● May 28, 2026
The company hires people for roles like janitor, maintenance worker and in other trades.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026
“I’m crying,” said Nidia Perez, a grandmother and school janitor who caught the game in a plaza in Caracas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026
Once freed from slavery, Washington toiled in coal mines, worked as a janitor in exchange for formal education and became a great American orator and leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
From Salon ● Oct. 27, 2025
The janitor stood and looked out into the darkness.
From "Raymie Nightingale" by Kate DiCamillo
It would mean more than 60,000 essential district workers — teachers, counselors, nurses, bus drivers, janitors and cafeteria workers — would walk off the job.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2026
A museum guard stood outside the bathroom, and janitors cleaned the piece every 15 minutes or so.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025
Marty comes of age in the Hill Valley of 1985, where vandals have shellacked the high school with so much graffiti that the janitors seem to have given up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 2025
And I'm sure there will always be a need for janitors to keep the place clean, so there's that.
From Salon ● Apr. 9, 2025
Colored men found jobs as carpenters, brickmasons, janitors, shoeshiners, handymen, and yard workers.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
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.
