glossator

Etymology

From Middle English glosatour, from Medieval Latin glōsātor, glossātor, from glōsāre, glōssāre (“to gloss”) + Latin -tor (agent suffix).

glossator means one who writes glosses. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why “glossator” is a great word

GLOSSATOR — [Noun] One who writes explanatory notes or annotations (glosses) on a text, especially a medieval legal scholar who authored glosses on the Corpus Juris of Justinian. From Middle English glosatour, from Medieval Latin glōsātor, glossātor, from glōssāre ("to gloss, to annotate") + Latin -tor (agent suffix). Unlike a "commentator," who constructs extended, systematic treatises, or a "lexicographer," who maps the broad landscape of a language, the glossator works in intimate, scribal confinement. He is the patient hand tracing minute clarifications between the lines of a vellum codex; the voice of precedent whispering in the margin; the builder not of grand edifices, but of countless footbridges across the text's every crevice. His legacy is a palimpsest of devotion, the quiet accumulation of light upon a single, revered page.

noun

One who writes glosses.“One to two generations after its copying, an extensive but intermittent interlinear Latin gloss [...] was added[.] [...] The glossator also added a single [Old English] gloss”
A legal scholar of the Middle Ages, (specifically) one who authored glosses on legal texts (especially the Corpus Juris of Justinian), typically distinguished from the later commentators who wrote in extended prose and adopted a more pragmatic form of jurisprudence.