etymologist
noun
etymologist is a noun meaning “A lexicographer or linguist who specializes in etymology (the origins of words)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-T-Y-M-O-L-O-G-I-S-T, and it appears about once in every 45 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of etymologist is etymologists.
What does etymologist mean?
noun
- 1
A lexicographer or linguist who specializes in etymology (the origins of words).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce etymologist?
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-etymologist.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of etymologist
- etymologists plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is etymologist?
Etymologist appears about once in every 45 million words in written English, the 206,808th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Etymologist in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense person who specializes in etymology:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | étymologiste, étymologue |
| German | Etymologe |
| Portuguese | etimólogo, etimologista |
| Spanish | etimologista, etimólogo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.