flator

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈflaː.tor/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈfla.tor/,

From flō (“blow”) +‎ -tor (agentive noun suffix), i.e. “blower”.

flātor m (genitive flātōris); third declension

1. flautist

   Synonym: tībīcen

   • c. 2nd century, Sextus Pompeius Festus, De verborum significatione 39:

     Flator tibicen.

2. caster (of metal), coiner
   • c. 2nd century CE, Sextus Pomponius, quoted in Digest 1.2.2.30:

     Constituti sunt eodem tempore et quattuorviri qui curam viarum agerent, et triumviri monetales aeris argenti auri flatores […]

     At the same time there were also established the quattuorviri who are to take care of the roads, and the triumviri monetales, those who cast copper, silver, and gold

3. (Medieval Latin) bellows-worker
   • 1333, P.R.O. Ministers’ Accounts; republished as “Some Fourteenth-Century Accounts of Ironworks at Tudeley, Kent”, in Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity, volume 63, 1913, page 157:

     In mercede anteriorum flatorum […]

     In recompense of the principal bellows-workers

4. (New Latin, generally) blower, that which blows
   • 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Hypothesis Physica nova ; republished as C. I. Gerhardt, editor, Leibnizes mathematische Schriften, volume 2, 1860, page 24:

     […] denique ventorum flatorum, caeterorumque aquae aërisque motuum ordinariorum phaenomena non difficulter deducuntur.

     and lastly the phenomena of those things that blow the winds, and otherwise of the regular movements of water and air, are not difficult to deduce.

The general sense of “blower” is etymologically transparent, and likely to have been used in Classical times, but is only directly attested in New Latin.

Third-declension noun.

• Vulgar Latin: *flātor (“odour, that which blows”)
  • Italian: fiatore
  • Old French: flaour (“smell, odour”)
    • → Middle English: flavour
      • English: flavour, flavor

flātor

1. second/third-person singular future passive imperative of flō

• “flator”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• flator 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)
• flator in Georges, Karl Ernst, Georges, Heinrich (1913–1918) Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th edition, volume 1, Hahnsche Buchhandlung
• flator in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• R. E. Latham, D. R. Howlett, & R. K. Ashdowne, editors (1975–2013), “flator”, in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources‎, London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, →ISBN, →OCLC

flator

1. indefinite plural of flata