Word.ws English Dictionary

mentee

mentee noun: a person who is being mentored.

Noun

mentee (plural mentees)

  1. A person who is being mentored.
    • Near-synonyms: apprentice, buddy (in training sense), intern, pupil, student, trainee
    • The mentee occasionally teaches the class, regularly confers with students, conducts optional special study sessions, and relieves the professor of most clerical classroom functions1958, Laurence E. Leamer, “Economic Education in Colleges”, in Educating Youth for Economic Competence (American Business Education Yearbook), volume 15, Eastern Business Teachers Association, page 49
    Antonyms:
    mentor, teacher

Examples of mentee in a sentence

  • [T]he two characters form a beautiful mentor-mentee relationship in which each derives tremendous strength from the other1979 April 11, Robert A. Cohn, “'Norma Rae' Gets an 'A'”, in St. Louis Jewish Light, page 14:
  • In some mentorship programs, the mentees get a say in whom they will be paired with.2022 November 29, Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Must I Mentor a White Law Student When I Requested a Black Mentee?”, in The New York Times...
  • In 2017, [Sam] Altman leaned into their disagreements and went on a tour of America, much like [Peter] Thiel’s other mentee [Mark] Zuckerberg, and spoke to one hundred Trump supporters.2025, Karen Hao, Empire of AI, New York City: Penguin Press, →ISBN:

Synonyms of mentee

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of mentee

Forms of mentee

pluralmentees

Origin of mentee

Back-formation from mentor. Although mentor comes from Ancient Greek Μέντωρ (Méntōr), the name of a mythological figure, it was mistakenly analyzed as terminating in the suffix -or (“doer”), leading to a form using the French patientive suffix -ee on the model of pairs such as donor–donee and employer–employee. Attested since at least 1958.

Words formed from mentee

Questions about mentee

What does mentee mean?
Mentee means a person who is being mentored.
How do you use mentee in a sentence?
[T]he two characters form a beautiful mentor-mentee relationship in which each derives tremendous strength from the other
What part of speech is mentee?
Mentee is a noun.
What is the plural of mentee?
The plural of mentee is mentees.

Words near mentee in the dictionary

  1. Mentawai gibbons
  2. Mentawais
  3. mentch
  4. mentches
  5. mentd.
  6. mentee
  7. mentees
  8. menteeship
  9. Menter
  10. menteri besar
  11. Mentering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mentee (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-mentee.oga.

Cite this entry: “mentee.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mentee. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.