illustrator

Forms

illūstrātor m (genitive illūstrātōris); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Latin illūstrō (“to light up, make famous”) + -tor, an agent noun of the verb.^[1][2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lactantius, in the Divine Institutes, calls God the source of light and the illuminator of things.^[3][2][4]

Semantic evolution

In Late Latin it meant one who brings something to light or reveals it,^[3] and also one who gives lustre to something: Jerome calls Cicero the illustrator of the Latin language and Antony that of the hermit life, and an inscription praises a man as the illustrator of his family.^[3][5] Christian writers, Augustine above all, used it of God as the one who enlightens the heart.^[3][5] Medieval Latin kept this sense, one who enlightens the soul with religious truth.^[6][7] English took illustrator in the 1590s in the sense “one who enlightens”, partly from the Late Latin word; the sense “one who draws pictures” came only in the 1680s.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 250–317 AD – Lactantius calls God the illustrator of things.^[3][4]
• c. 383–419/420 AD – Jerome uses it of a person who gives lustre to a way of life or a language.^[3][4]
• 354–430 AD – Augustine calls God the illustrator of his heart.^[3][5][4]
• c. 400 AD – An inscription in Rome praises a man as the illustrator of his family.^[3]
• 1590s – English borrows illustrator as “one who enlightens”.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. One who brings to light or reveals; an enlightener.^[3][2][9]
2. One who gives lustre to something, one who makes it illustrious.^[3][5]
3. (Ecclesiastical Latin) God as the one who enlightens the heart or soul.^[3][7][6]

Related words

• illūstrō
• English illustrator

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
5. ^ a b c d Georges, Karl Ernst (1913–1918), Ausführliches lateinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, 8th ed., ed. Heinrich Georges, Hannover; Leipzig: Hahn
6. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill
7. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Gaffiot, Félix (2016), Dictionnaire latin-français, new ed. by Gérard Gréco et al. (Gaffiot 2016), online ed.