Exhorter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who strongly urges or encourages others to take action or adopt a particular belief
2. A person who gives strong advice or earnest recommendations to motivate or persuade others
3. An individual who earnestly urges others to do something or supports them with persuasive encouragement

Etymology: The word is built from "exhort" plus the agent suffix "-er," so its history is largely the history of its parts. "Exhort" came into English from Latin "exhortari," meaning to encourage or urge on, formed from "ex-" (out, thoroughly) and "hortari" (to urge). The suffix has a longer and more tangled road. It descends from Latin "-arius," which Old French turned into "-ier," and English borrowed that form in the Middle English period. An older Germanic line also feeds into it through Old English "-ere," so the same ending in English reflects two routes that converged. Because the suffix does most of its work in ordinary words such as "baker" and "writer," "exhorter" follows a pattern English speakers apply freely. The root "hortari" is also the source of "exhortation," the more common noun for the act itself, so the pair shows how English keeps one Latin verb available in several grammatical shapes.

Synonyms: advocate, encourager, promoter, supporter, motivator

Antonyms: discourager, opponent, critic, detractor, adversary