Consolers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who provide comfort or solace to those in distress or grief
2. People offering emotional support in times of sorrow or loss
3. Those who help others cope with pain through empathy and understanding

Etymology: "Consolers" is the plural of "consoler," which is simply "console" with the agent suffix "-er" added, meaning one who consoles. The suffix itself has a long pedigree: it descends from the Latin "-arius," which passed through Old French "-ier" into Middle English "-er," while a parallel line through Proto-Germanic and Old English "-ere" also fed into the same ending. The suffix therefore reached English by two routes that merged over the centuries. The verb "console" is the more interesting half of the pairing. It comes from the Latin "consolari," meaning to comfort or console, built from "con-" (together, thoroughly) and "solari" (to comfort). Because the English verb and the suffix each arrived by different paths, "consoler" is a straightforward combination of a borrowed Latin root with a native-and-Romance suffix rather than a single inherited word.

Synonyms: comforters, solace-givers