spiriter means one who spirits away another, particularly one who steals children to be sold into forced labour in the New World. It carries an Arena rating of 1389, earned across 8 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, spiriter ranks #321 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #770 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #1,502 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #2,219 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
Why “spiriter” is a great word
SPIRITER — [Noun] A person who abducts someone, especially a child, for forced labor or servitude, or, in a distinct secondary sense, a person sensitive to or communicating with spirits. From 'spirit' (in the sense of to carry off secretly or the incorporeal entity) + the agent-noun suffix '-er'. First attested in 1665 in the writing of Thomas White. Unlike 'kidnapper' (a general term for abduction) or 'medium' (a specific conduit for the dead), a spiriter historically denoted a predator of chillingly transactional purpose. It is the shadowy figure on a dim wharf bundling a child onto a ship, the cold hand over a mouth in a crowded market, and, in a disorienting lexical shift, the solitary listener in a parlor, head cocked to a distant whisper—two forms of disappearance, one corporeal, one incorporeal, bound by a single, unsettling word.
Etymology
From spirit + -er.
noun
- One who spirits away another, particularly one who steals children to be sold into forced labour in the New World.
- One who is sensitive to spirits; a medium or spiritualist.e.g.“The spiriters sit round and wait, and, after some time, the spiriter with the largest amount of faith feels a spirit.” — 1869 September 22, Q, “Philosophical Essays”, in Humbug: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Satire, page 8:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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