elector

Definition

A person eligible to vote in an election; a member of an electorate, a voter.

Etymology

From Middle English electour (“one with a right to vote in electing some office, elector”), borrowed from Late Latin ēlēctor (“chooser, selector; voter, elector”), from Latin ēligere (“to elect”) + -tor (suffix forming masculine agent nouns), equivalent to elect + -or. Ēligere is the present active infinitive of ēligō (“to extract, pluck or root out; (figurative) to choose, elect, pick out”), from ē- (variant of ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’)) + legō (“to appoint, choose, select”) (from Proto-Italic *legō (“to gather, collect”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to collect, gather”)).

Example Sentences

• "Where the qualifications of the electors are the ſame, whether they have to chooſe a ſmall or a large number their votes will fall upon thoſe in whom they have the moſt confidence; whether thoſe happen to be men of large fortunes or of moderate property or of no property at all."
• "The conſtitution of France ſays, that every man who pays a tax of ſixty ſous per annum, (2s. and 6d. Engliſh), is an elector.— [...] Can any thing be more limited, and at the ſame time more capricious, than what the qualifications of electors are in England? [...] Capricious—becauſe the loweſt character that can be ſuppoſed to exiſt, and who has not ſo much as the viſible means of an honeſt livelihood, is an elector in ſome places; while, in other places, the man who pays very large taxes, and with a fair known character, and the farmer who rents to the amount of three or four hundred pounds a year, and with a property on that farm to three or four times that amount, is not admitted to be an elector."
• "In the courſe of not many years muſt the electours of one place grapple in the waves for their town, and at preſent a ſeptennial conſequence is given to a heap of ruins."

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