trouveur

From French trouveur; compare troubadour.

trouveur (plural trouveurs)

1. (dated) A minstrel, a troubadour.
   • 1796, Robert Southey, Joan of Arc, Book IV, 1829, The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, page 16,

     Meantime the Trouveur struck the harp; he sang

     Of Lancelot du Lake, the truest Knight

     That ever loved fair Lady;

   • 1834, Robert Thomson, Treatise on the Progress of Literature and its Effects on Society, page 81,

     But, secondly, a great many of these tales were borrowed from the narratives of the trouveurs or minstrels who wandered through the north of France, relating stories or reciting poems for the amusement of their entertainers.

   • 1835, Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature, First Series, page 118,

     The origin of these tales must be traced to the inventions of the Trouveurs, who doubtless often adopted them from various nations.

From trouver (“to find, invent”) +‎ -eur. Or from Old French troveor (objective/accusative case), itself from the verb trover + -eor, or possibly corresponding to a Gallo-Vulgar Latin *tropatōre(m), accusative of *tropātor, from the verb *tropō, tropāre, from Latin tropus. Cognate to Occitan trobador. See also French troubadour, which was taken from Old Occitan.

trouveur m (plural trouveurs)

1. A finder; discoverer
2. An inventor, creator

• trouvable (adjective)
• trouvaille
• trouvé (adjective)
• trouver
• trouvère m

• “trouveur” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).