speculator

From Latin speculātor (“spy, explorer, investigator”), from speculor (“to watch, to observe”) +‎ -tor (“-er: forming agent nouns”), from specula (“watchtower”), from speciō (“to watch, to observe”), q.v. In some senses, an agent noun formed within English from speculate. Doublet of spectator.

speculator (plural speculators)

1. One who speculates; an observer; a contemplator.
   • c. 1683 (date written), Thomas Brown [i.e., Thomas Browne], “(please specify the page)”, in [Thomas Tenison], editor, Certain Miscellany Tracts, London: Charles Mearn, , published 1683, →OCLC:

     a bold and paradoxical speculator

2. One who forms theories; a theorist.
   • 1666, Joseph Glanvill, Philosophical Considerations concerning Witches and Witchcraft:

     […] in things of Fact, the People are as much to be believed, as the most subtle Philosophers and Speculators, since here sense is the Judge.

   • 1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second:

     For, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the great majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have been burned alive in Smithfield.

3. (business, finance) One who speculates; as in investing, one who is willing to take volatile risks upon invested principal for the potential of substantial returns.
4. (rugby) Synonym of field goal

• speculate
• speculation
• speculative
• speculatrix

• entrepreneur
• gambler
• punter

• copulaters, outparcels, outplacers, peculators

From speculor (“to watch, to observe”) +‎ -tor (“-er: forming agent nouns”), from specula (“watchtower”), from speciō (“to watch, to observe”). Doublet of spectator.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key):
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key):

speculātor m (genitive speculātōris, feminine speculātrīx); third declension

1. spy, scout
   1. a particular scout of the Imperial legion’s commander or of a province’s governor also competent to carry out executions
2. explorer, investigator

Third-declension noun.

speculātor

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

• “speculator”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “speculator”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "speculator", 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)
• speculator in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “speculator”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers

Borrowed from French spéculateur. Equivalent to specula +‎ -tor.

speculator m (uncountable)

1. speculator