Lecturers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who deliver educational presentations to groups of students in academic settings
2. professionals responsible for instructing and facilitating discussions in a specified subject area
3. educators employed primarily at colleges or universities to teach, guide, and assess students' learning

Etymology: "Lecturers" is the plural of "lecturer," and the more interesting story is the stem beneath it. The noun "lecture" descends from Latin "lectura," a reading, from "legere," to read, and it originally meant a reading aloud of a text rather than a talk delivered by someone in front of students. That is still a useful clue: a lecturer was, at root, someone who read something to others. The Latin chain ran through Medieval Latin "lectūra," which carried the sense of a reading or a lesson, and reached English as "lecture" in the Middle English period. The agent ending "-er" is an ordinary English suffix, so "lecturer" is simply "lecture" plus "-er," and the plural "lecturers" adds a regular "-s" to that.

Synonyms: instructor, teacher, professor, educator, speaker