Electour

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who has the legal right to cast a vote in an election or to choose someone for public office
2. Someone qualified to take part in choosing a representative, such as a voter in a national or local poll
3. An individual entitled to participate in selecting a candidate or official through a formal ballot

Etymology: "Electour" is the older spelling of "elector", and it arrived in Middle English already carrying its Latin sense of a chooser. Its path ran through Late Latin "elector", meaning chooser or selector, and then "electus", the root behind the modern "elect". Those trace back to the Latin verb "eligere", "to elect", which is built from "ex-" (here in the form "e-", meaning out) and "legere", to pick or choose. The Latin verb itself has a more physical origin. Its base sense is "to pluck or root out", so choosing was originally an act of picking something out from among others, the same idea that "legere" carries in words such as "lecture" and "collect". The Middle English spelling "electour" reflects the French-influenced forms of the period before the modern spelling settled, which is why the word looks so different from its Latin model.

Synonyms: elector, voter, constituent, chooser