commentator

• commentatour (archaic)

In form, from Middle English commentator, from Latin commentātor (“author, inventor, interpreter, jailer”), from commentātus + -or (“-er: forming agent nouns”), from commentāri (“to ponder, to study, to write upon”), from comminīscor (“to think over, to invent”) + -tārī (“to frequently be ~ed”). In meaning, influenced by comment and commentary.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑmənˌteɪtəɹ/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒmənˌteɪtə/

• Audio (Southern England):

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commentator (plural commentators)

1. A person who makes a commentary, particularly
   1. (rare, obsolete) Synonym of historian or chronicler, a person who compiles an annotated history.
   3. A person who compiles explanations and critical notes on a text.
   4. (law) A person who compiles explanations of the law, particularly (historical) comparatively innovative European jurists in the 14th century, as opposed to earlier glossators.
      • 2009, Randall Lesaffer, European Legal History: A Cultural and Political Perspective, →ISBN, page 257:

        It would be well into the fourteenth century before the commentators came into their own.

   5. (Christianity) A person who compiles explanations of biblical passages.
   6. (media, sports) A person who provides an instantaneous description of a public event, particularly a sporting event, for a mass media audience.
   8. (media) A person who provides analysis or opinion on current events, especially for a mass media audience.
      • 2025 February 19, Christian Wolmar, “Reeves talks of 'growth' but pays lip service to the railway”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 35:

        Specifically, and unforgivably, she restarted the Heathrow Third Runway bandwagon, which had been stalled for more than a decade and even declared dead by most commentators.

• (expositor on law or scripture): interpreter (obsolete)

• “commentator, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

From commentor +‎ -tor. In the medieval sense of “jailer”, from the jailer’s duty of writing commentārii (“memoranda”) with records of those held in custody.

commentātor m (genitive commentātōris); third declension

1. (Late Latin) inventor, author
2. (Late Latin) interpreter
3. (Medieval Latin) jailer

Third-declension noun.

• commentātrīx

commentātor

1. second/third-person singular future active imperative of commentor

• “commentator”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• "commentator", 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)
• commentator in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Souter, Alexander (1949) “commentator”, in A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D.‎, 1st edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, published 1957, page 62
• Niermeyer, Jan Frederik (1976) “commentator”, in Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, Boston: E. J. Brill, page 217
• commentator in Ramminger, Johann (2016 July 16 (last accessed)) Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700‎, pre-publication website, 2005-2016