noun
mentor
An experienced and trusted adviser.
Where it comes from
Mentor ordinarily means an experienced and trusted adviser. Mentor is the name of Odysseus's trusted friend in the Odyssey. Athena appears in Mentor's form while guiding Odysseus's son Telemachus. A prominent Mentor in Fénelon's 1699 reworking of the story helped the name become a French common noun for a trusted guide.
How the meaning developed
English then borrowed that role.
Sources
Definitions adapted from Open English WordNet where applicable. License and attribution. Word-history text comes from Lexifour’s sourced social research; pages are assembled automatically, not individually fact-checked on every update.
Updated 2026-10-05. Report a correction.