Gladiator

How to spell gladiator

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce gladiator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gladiator mean?

1. nounA man trained to fight with weapons for public entertainment in ancient Rome, or by extension any combatant in a spectacle.

Gladiator in a sentence

• The museum exhibit recreated the armour a gladiator wore in the arena.

• Each gladiator trained for years before stepping onto the sand of the Colosseum.

Where does gladiator come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from Latin gladiator, which meant a swordsman, built on gladius, the Latin word for a sword. In ancient Rome a gladiator was a man, often a slave, prisoner, or hired professional, trained to fight with weapons for public entertainment in the arena, and the name simply marked him as the one who wielded the gladius. The same gladius root also gave English the flower name 'gladiolus', whose long, sword-shaped leaves earned it the nickname 'sword lily'. English adopted gladiator in the sixteenth century, keeping the Latin form intact, which is why the spelling preserves the tidy gladi- plus -ator pattern rather than anything more anglicised. The trap for writers is the unstressed middle, where the 'ia' can easily collapse, and the agent ending '-ator' rather than '-iter'.

How the word is built

• gladi- (from Latin gladius: sword)
• -ator (agent suffix: one who does)