海角大神

Making my peace with 'mentoring'

The Monitor鈥檚 language columnist has made peace with 鈥榤entor鈥� as a verb; 鈥榤entee鈥� as the term for the one being mentored, not so much.

Verbal Energy

A professional organization to which I belong has long struggled to establish a mentoring program for its members.

I suspect we鈥檙e not alone. It can be hard to find people of a certain breadth and depth of experience willing to commit to working long term to help someone more junior find the right professional path.

But beyond that, there are those 鈥� found disproportionately within the 鈥渂readth and depth鈥� crowd, I suspect 鈥� who have trouble with mentor as a verb.

Lucy Ferriss, at the Lingua Franca blog, commented recently that a new writing project has taken her 鈥渄eep into the fields of business and finance鈥� where 鈥渁t every turn鈥� she has been encountering mentor and 鈥� gasp! 鈥� mentee. 鈥淚 confess publicly here, and with no small amount of shame, that these terms irritate me, as if someone鈥檚 placing a guiding hand on the back of my neck every time either of them comes up.鈥�

Those whose breadth and depth extend to the Greek classics, as Ms. Ferriss鈥檚 clearly do, recall that Mentor was the friend whom Odysseus asked to keep an eye on his son, Telemachus, while Odysseus was off fighting the Trojan War. And sometimes Athena disguised herself as Mentor to counsel Telemachus and keep an eye on the suitors trying to make moves on Penelope, Odysseus鈥檚 wife, in his absence. (Maybe my professional group would have less trouble if we could promise prospective mentors they could pass off some of the heavy lifting to the Greek goddess of wisdom.)

Mentor certainly makes for an apt figurative usage 鈥� after all, Mentor actually did mentor Telemachus. And I accept that nouns, even proper nouns, can become verbs.聽

My own quibble with the mentor thing is that there鈥檚 no perfect term for the junior partner in the relationship.聽

Mentee is the word that鈥檚 often used; it has made it into at least some dictionaries. But it sounds like the name of those sea creatures that fooled love-starved sailors into thinking they were seeing mermaids, doesn鈥檛 it? And it comes close enough to the French word meaning 鈥渢o lie,鈥� in the mendacious sense (), that mentee suggests 鈥渟omeone who has been sold a bill of goods.鈥澛�

My real gripe with mentee, though, has been that it suggests that those who use it think mentor is an 鈥渁gent noun,鈥� referring to a 鈥渄oer鈥� of some imagined action, 鈥渕enting.鈥� A 鈥渕entor鈥� is one who 鈥渕ents,鈥� in other words. (Compare lessor and lessee, for instance.)

has this to say in its entry for mentor, which came into English as a noun around 1750: 鈥渢he name appears to be an agent noun of mentos,鈥� meaning 鈥渋ntent, purpose, spirit, passion.鈥� Mentor is related to a Sanskrit word meaning 鈥渙ne who thinks,鈥� and to the Latin monitor, 鈥渙ne who admonishes.鈥澛�

So maybe a mentor is 鈥渙ne who thinks,鈥� and by extension, shares thoughts with others. I鈥檓 still not sold, though, on mentee.