Noun
After college, her professor became her close friend and mentor.
He needed a mentor to teach him about the world of politics.
We volunteer as mentors to disadvantaged children.
young boys in need of mentorsVerb
The young intern was mentored by the country's top heart surgeon.
Our program focuses on mentoring teenagers.
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Noun
In the 1970s and 1980s, in dialogue with their mentors Bernd and Hilla Becher, artists like Andreas Gursky gradually moved away from black-and-white purism, embracing color and exploring banal themes through portraits, cityscapes and cultural landmarks.—Nargess Banks, Forbes.com, 11 May 2025 Guided by his father’s insistence on self-education and critical thinking and African American mentors (and heavily influenced by self-help books like Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill), Muhammad learned that access to wisdom could transcend circumstance.—Matthew Kayser, USA Today, 10 May 2025
Verb
She was selected for BFI NETWORK x BAFTA Crew mentoring programme.—Zac Ntim, Deadline, 6 May 2025 King has been practicing music for most of his life and was even mentored by the late Blues legend James Cotton.—Caroline Blair, People.com, 5 May 2025 See All Example Sentences for mentor
Word History
Etymology
Noun
as name borrowed from Latin Mentōr, borrowed from Greek Méntōr; as generic noun borrowed from French mentor, after Mentor, character in the novel Les aventures de Télémaque (1699) by the French cleric and writer François Fénelon (1651-1715), based on characters in the Odyssey
Note:
In Fénelon's work Mentor is a principal character, and his speeches and advice to Telemachus during their travels constitute much of the book's substance.
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