Legal Dictionary

arbiter

Definition of arbiter

Etymology

    < Latin arbiter ("a witness, judge, literally one who goes to see") < ar- for ad- ("to") + betere ("to come").

Pronunciation

Noun

arbiter (plural arbiters)

  1. A person appointed, or chosen, by parties to determine a controversy between them; an arbitrator.

    * 1931, William Bennett Munro, The government of the United States, national, state, and local, page 495
    In order to protect individual liberty there must be an arbiter between the governing powers and the governed.

  2. (With of) Any person who has the power of judging and determining, or ordaining, without control; one whose power of deciding and governing is not limited.

    Television and film, not Vogue and similar magazines, are the arbiters of fashion.

Related terms

Verb

to arbiter (third-person singular simple present arbiters, present participle arbitering, simple past and past participle arbitered)

  1. (transitive) To act as arbiter.

    * 2003, Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Julie Barlow, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not the French, page 116
    Worse, since there was no institution to arbiter disagreements between Parliament and the government, whenever Parliament voted against the government on the smallest issues, coalitions fragmented, and governments had to be recomposed.

External links

  • arbiter in Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
  • arbiter in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Anagrams

  • Alphagram: abeirrt
  • rarebit

References:

  1. Wiktionary. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.



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