Solicitor

How to spell solicitor

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce solicitor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does solicitor mean?

1. nounA member of the legal profession who advises clients, prepares documents, and handles legal matters, especially outside court.
2. nounA person who calls at homes or businesses to sell goods or seek donations.
3. nounA senior government law officer, such as the Solicitor General or a city's chief legal counsel.

Solicitor in a sentence

• She hired a solicitor to handle the sale of her flat.

• The sign on the gate warned that no solicitor would be admitted.

• The solicitor general argued the case before the supreme court.

• The family met their solicitor to discuss the terms of the will.

• A solicitor knocked during dinner trying to sell magazine subscriptions.

• The city solicitor reviewed the new zoning ordinance.

Where does solicitor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb sollicitare, meaning to disturb, agitate, or urge on, which was itself built from sollicitus, literally 'thoroughly moved' or 'anxious', combining sollus 'whole, entire' with citus, the past participle of ciere 'to set in motion'. The idea of someone who keeps urging or pressing a matter passed into French as solliciteur and reached English in the fifteenth century. By the sixteenth century it had settled into a legal sense, describing a person who pursues or manages claims on another's behalf, and in Britain it came to name the branch of lawyer who advises clients and prepares cases rather than arguing them in higher courts. The spelling trap lies in the soft middle: the unstressed second 'i' and the closing -or rather than -er catch many writers out, and the single rather than double letters reflect the Latin sollicitare losing one 'l' on its way through French.

How the word is built

• solicit- (from Latin sollicitare: to disturb, urge, stir up)
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)