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''coadjutor'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260124114812-00-⌔

coadjutor - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

coadjutor (plural coadjutors)

  • An assistant or helper. [from c. 1430–1450]12
    • ✤ Then have the lady patronesses and their active coadjutors, whether noble or ignoble, all the work of beating up for recruits to go over again.3
    • ✤ The mountaineer, with all his pulses aquiver, looked down into his coadjutor ’s white, startled face.4
    • ✤ Hitherto I have been but the witness, little more; and I should hardly think now to take another tone, that of your coadjutor, for the time, did I not perceive in you,—at the crisis too—a troubled hesitancy, proceeding, I doubt not, from the clash of military duty with moral scruple—scruple vitalized by compassion.5
  • (ecclesiastical) An assistant to a bishop. [from 1549]1
    • ✤ When old age rendered any Bishop unable to perform his duties, the first example of which occurs AD 211, when Alexander became coadjutor to Narcissus at Jerusalem6
    • ✤ August then appointed Prince George III of Anhalt (who was both a theologian and a priest as well as a prince) to be his coadjutor in spiritual matters.7

Etymology

From Middle English coadjutowre,8 from Old French coadjuteur, borrowed from Late Latin coadiūtōrem, from co- + adiūtor (“helper”), from adiuvō (“to help”) + -tor (agent suffix).9 By surface analysis, co- +‎ adjutor.

The French derivation gave the accentuation co⁠ˈadjutor (used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), but the poets generally, since 1600, appear to have coa⁠ˈdjutor, after Latin.9 No Latin ﹡coadiuvō or ﹡coadiūtō is recorded, but in the modern languages words have been formed on these types, suggested by coadjutor.9

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /kəʊəˈd͡ʒuːtə/, /kəʊˈæd͡ʒʊtə/

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. “coadjutor, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. ↩ ↩2

  2. “cōadjūtǒur, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

  3. 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 174: ↩

  4. 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the “Stranger People’s” Country, Nebraska, published 2005, pages 206–7: ↩

  5. 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Billy Budd ‎, London: Constable & Co.: ↩

  6. 1842, John Henry Newman, The Ecclesiastical History of M. L’abbé Fleury: ↩

  7. 2005, James Martin Estes, Peace, Order and the Glory of God: ↩

  8. “cōadjūtǒur, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

  9. “coadjutor, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

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Secondary

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