desultor means A person skilled at leaping from one horse or chariot to another. It carries an Arena rating of 1439, earned across 10 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, desultor ranks #563 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #578 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #1,068 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #1,389 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
Why “desultor” is a great word
A performer in the ancient Roman circus whose skill consisted in leaping from the back of one galloping horse or chariot to another. The word descends directly from the Latin dēsultor, from dēsilīre, "to leap down" (dē- "down" + salīre "to leap, jump"). Unlike an equestrian, whose mastery is of riding, or an acrobat, whose feats are terrestrial and varied, the desultor’s entire art was this single, perilous transfer of self between moving platforms. It was the blur of a tunic against the dust of the spina, the snatched breath between the pounding of hooves, and the desperate grip on new reins amid the roar of the crowd—a fleeting metaphor for any life lived as a series of precarious, necessary leaps.
Etymology
From Latin desultor.
noun
- A person skilled at leaping from one horse or chariot to another.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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