Other forms: consultants
A consultant is an expert a company pays for advice instead of employing outright. They arrive for six weeks with a laptop and a lot of slides, explain what is wrong with your supply chain, and leave before anyone has to do it.
The job brings its own vocabulary: the firm is a consultancy, the bill is consultancy fees, and to consult somebody is to ask them. In British hospitals the word means something else entirely, and the difference matters — a consultant is the most senior doctor on a case, the one whose name heads the ward round, and junior doctors work for years to become one. So 'she's a consultant' in London may mean a surgeon rather than a management adviser. Elsewhere the field gets attached to make it clear: IT consultant, marketing consultant, image consultant.
1nounconsultantAn outside expert paid to give professional advice to a business or client.~97%
“They brought in a consultant to redesign the whole booking system.”
synonyms: adviser, specialist
2nounhospitalsIn British hospitals, the most senior doctor in a particular specialty.~3%
“The consultant will see her on Thursday morning.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 30 sentences found in the wild and placed 30 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
consultant is an expert adviser.
Consultant is the French word consultant, the present participle of consulter — literally a consulting person. Behind it stands Latin consulto, 'to deliberate, consult', a frequentative of consulo, 'to consult, deliberate, consider, ask advice', which opens with com-, 'together'. Whatever the day rate, the idea underneath is people putting their heads together.
Latin
consulto — to deliberate, consult
French
consultant
English, today
consultant
Built from
From French consultant, present participle of consulter, from Latin consulto (“to deliberate, consult”), frequentative of consulo (“to consult, deliberate, consider, reflect upon, ask advice”), from com- (“together”) + -sulere, of uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA