konsilanto

Decode it: konsil- plus -ant- plus -o.Konsili is to advise. -Ant- is the present active participle, the one that means "currently doing it". Close it with -o and you have the person who is doing it: an adviser. The machinery is exactly the same as parolanto a speaker, komencanto a beginner, vojaĝanto a traveller, and La Parolanto sets it out in full.

The -ant- against -ist- question, which is the useful one. An -anto is doing the thing now; an -isto does it for a living. A konsilanto is whoever is advising you at the moment, formally or not, and the word carries no claim about qualifications. A konsilisto is a professional whose trade is advice. In practice the movement's own committees are full of konsilantoj in the first sense, which is why this is the form that reached rank 2,647 and the other did not.

The family, and its confusing middle. Three nouns hang off this root and learners mix them constantly:

• konsilo is a single piece of advice. Dankon pro la konsilo.
• konsilanto is the person giving it.
• konsilio is a council, a standing body of people. La Konsilio de Eŭropo.

That last one is the trap, because -io elsewhere builds country names (Britio) and abstract fields, and here it does neither: konsili/o is its own listed word meaning an assembly of people. And konsilantaro, with the collective -ar-, is an advisory board, which is a different animal from a konsilio again.

In use. Konsilanto de somebody, or konsilanto pri something: konsilanto pri financoj. Note the verb's own pattern while you are here - the advice is the object and the person takes al, so it is mi konsilas al vi atendi, not the English word order.