lictor

• lictour (obsolete, rare)

Borrowed from Latin līctor.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlɪktə/
• Rhymes: -ɪktə(ɹ)

lictor (plural lictors)

1. An officer in ancient Rome, attendant on a consul or magistrate, who bore the fasces and was responsible for punishing criminals.
   • 1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 276:

     “Regard not that, my brother,” answered Magdalen Græme; “the first successors of Saint Peter himself, were elected not in sunshine but in tempests—not in the halls of the Vatican, but in the subterranean vaults and dungeons of Heathen Rome—they were not gratulated with shouts and salvos of cannon-shot and of musquetry, and the display of artificial fire—no, my brother—but by the hoarse summons of Lictors and Prætors, who came to drag the Fathers of the Church to martyrdom. […]”

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     ‘Beware the power of the mob, Caesar.’ Then, schooled in needful agility, he ran away before a lictor’s whip could reach him.

From ligō (“to bind”), ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *leyǵ-. A likely reference to the fascis symbol and their role as a magistrates' attaché; see also ligation and liaison.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈliːk.tor/, [ˈlʲiːkt̪ɔr]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈlik.tor/, [ˈlikt̪or]

līctor m (genitive līctōris); third declension

1. lictor (officer in Ancient Rome)

Third-declension noun.

• English: lictor
• French: licteur
• Italian: littore
• Polish: liktor
• Spanish: lictor

• “lictor”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “lictor”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• lictor in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • the lictors clear the way: lictores summovent turbam (Liv. 4. 50)
    
• “lictor”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “lictor”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

lictor m (plural lictores)

1. lictor (official in Ancient Rome)

Borrowed from Latin lictor.

lictor m (plural lictori)

1. lictor (officer in Ancient Rome)

Borrowed from Latin līctor.

lictor m (plural lictores)

1. lictor (official in Ancient Rome)

• “lictor”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014