speculator

Borrowed from Latin speculātor (“a spy, explorer, investigator”).

speculator (plural speculators)

1. One who speculates; an observer; a contemplator.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Thomas Browne to this entry?)

2. One who forms theories; a theorist.
   • 1666, Joseph Glanvill, Philosophical Considerations concerning Witches and Witchcraft

     […] in things of Fact, the People are as much to be believed, as the most subtle Philosophers and Speculators, since here sense is the Judge.

   • 1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second

     For, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the great majority of cases, actually die with the body, would have been burned alive in Smithfield.

3. (business, finance) One who speculates; as in investing, one who is willing to take volatile risks upon invested principle for the potential of substantial returns.
4. (rugby) Synonym of field goal

• speculate
• speculation
• speculative

• entrepreneur
• gambler
• punter

• copulaters, outparcels, outplacers, peculators

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /spe.kuˈlaː.tor/, [spɛ.kʊˈɫaː.tɔr]

speculātor m (genitive speculātōris); third declension

1. spy, scout
2. explorer
3. investigator

Third declension.

speculātor

1. second-person singular future active imperative of speculor
2. third-person singular future active imperative of speculor

• speculator in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• speculator in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• speculator in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• speculator in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• speculator in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers