viator

Borrowed from Latin viātor (“traveler”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /vaɪˈeɪt.əɹ/, /vaɪˈeɪ.tɔɹ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /vʌɪˈeɪtə/
• Rhymes: -eɪtə(ɹ)

viator (plural viators or viatores)

1. (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  […]

2. (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.

3. 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 […]

• Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, 1989.

From viō (“to travel”) +‎ -tor, from via (“road, path”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [wiˈaː.tɔr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [viˈaː.tor]

viātor m (genitive viātōris, feminine viātrīx); third declension

1. traveller, wayfarer

   Coordinate term: viātrīx

2. summoner, messenger: an officer employed by the state for taking messages, etc.
   • 106 BCE – 43 BCE, Cicero, Cato Maior de Senectute 16.56:

     Ā vīllā in Senātum arcessēbātur et Curius et cēterī senēs; ex quō, quī eōs arcessēbant viātōrēs nōminātī sunt.

     Curius and other elders were summoned from their country estates to the Senate; it is for this reason that [the officials] who used to summon them were given the name viatores, [or “travelers.”]
     (In other words, such duties meant that the summoners were always “on the road” or via.)

Third-declension noun.

• via

• “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, 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