tractator

From Latin tractātor (“manager, homilist”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /tɹækˈteɪ.tə/

• Audio (Southern England):

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tractator (plural tractators)

1. (historical) In medieval commerce, the person who handles or transports merchandise on behalf of an investor; an entrepreneur.
   • 1987, John H. Pryor, Commerce, Shipping and Naval Warfare in the Medieval Mediterranean, page 172:

     As well as being greatly useful to tractators who wanted to go on to further voyages or to stay overseas for a longer period, it was also indispensable when a tractator fell ill or died.

2. A person who writes tracts.
3. A Tractarian.
   • 1842, Charles Kingsley, a letter:

     Do you not see the noble standard of Christian morality , and its infinite superiority to this ? Talking of the Tractators […]

• tract

• attractor

From tractō (“handle, manage, transact”) +‎ -tor.

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

tractātor m (genitive tractātōris, feminine tractātrīx); third declension

1. (Classical Latin) masseur
2. (Classical Latin) imperial official, manager
3. (Late Latin) commentator, homilist
4. (Late Latin) accountant
5. (Medieval Latin) tractator, entrepreneur (a person responsible for shipping and handling merchandise on behalf of an investor)

Third-declension noun.

• English: tractator

tractātor

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

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