Noun
viator (plural viators or viatores)
- (rare) A wayfarer, traveler.
1856, Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour, Letters to Squire Pedant, in the East, page 28:After the deperdition of Indagator, having an appetency still further to pervstigate the frithy occident; being still an agamist, and not wishing to be any longer a pedaneous viator, nor to be solivagant, I brought about the emption of a yaud, partly by numismatic mutuation, and partly by a hypothecation of my fusee and argental horologe.
- (Can we date this quote?), University of California, Los Angeles. Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Viator, Univ of California Press (→ISBN), page 25:
- [The] notion of man as viator in search of perfection in history thus did not function as a legitimating idea for progress.
2019, Reinhard Hütter, Bound for Beatitude A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics, Catholic University of America Press, →ISBN, page 39:... theological virtues and of the whole supernatural life in God on account of sanctifying grace. Aquinas understands the viator in the state of grace in […]
- (rare, historical) An apparitor, a summoner: a minor Roman official.
1882, Titus Livius, Historiarum Romanarum quæ supersunt liber secundus, ed. by H. Belcher, page 198:The apparitor tribuni was a viator, whose most important function was that of arrest.
- A person who is subject to a viatical insurance policy or a viatical settlement.
2016, Howard M. Friedman, Anderson's Ohio Annotated Securities Law Handbook, 2016 Edition, LexisNexis, →ISBN:[…] the viators are residents of different states, the viatical settlement […]
2020, Deborah Bouchoux, Christine Sgarlata Chung, Business Organizations Law in Focus, Aspen Publishers, →ISBN, page 711:Viatical settlement providers purchase the policies from individual viators. Once purchased, these viatical settlement providers typically sell […]
References
- Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, 1989.
Etymology
From viō (“to travel”) + -tor, from via (“road, path”).
References
- “viator”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “viator”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- viator in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- “viator”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
- “viator”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin