Esperantist

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A person who speaks the constructed international language Esperanto or actively supports its use and spread
2. Someone who has learned Esperanto and advocates for it as a shared global language for communication
3. A follower of the artificial language Esperanto, often one who promotes its adoption among speakers of different tongues

Etymology: Esperanto was published in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto", meaning "one who hopes", and the name was soon applied to the language itself. A speaker of that language came to be called an "esperantisto", formed on the Esperanto word for "Esperantist" with the standard suffix for a person who follows or practises something. English then borrowed the term by calque, meaning it took the Esperanto construction and rebuilt it from English parts: Esperanto plus the English suffix "-ist", which turns a name into a word for an adherent of a doctrine or a practitioner of an art. The result is a word whose base is itself a pen name. Zamenhof chose "Esperanto" because it means "one who hopes", so an Esperantist is, etymologically, a follower of someone who called himself "the one who hopes". The suffix does ordinary work here; the surprise lies in the first element.