Other forms: professors
A professor is a senior teacher at a university. Professor of history, ask the professor, made a professor.
The word means different things across the Atlantic: in Britain, professor is the most senior academic rank and most university teachers are lecturers or readers; in America, professor covers most teaching staff, with assistant, associate and full professor as the grades. Emeritus professor is a retired one keeping the title. Note that in Britain the title is used before the name — Professor Smith — and outranks Doctor.
1nounprofessorA senior teacher at a university.
“She was made a professor at about thirty-eight.”
professor is an academic rank.
Latin professor means one who declares publicly, from profiteri, to declare — the same root as profess and profession. A professor was somebody who publicly professed a subject.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeh₂-
Latin
professor — declarer, person who claims knowledge
Anglo-Norman
proffessur
Middle English
professor,professour
English, today
professor
Built from
From Middle English professor,professour, from Anglo-Norman proffessur and its etymon Latin professor (“declarer, person who claims knowledge”), from the past participle stem of profiteor (“profess”). by surface analysis, profess + -or.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA