Offenser

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who commits a wrong, breaks a law, or causes harm, an older spelling of offender
2. An archaic term for someone who transgresses a rule, moral code, or law and so does wrong
3. Someone who violates a standard of conduct or the law, a form of the word used in older English

Etymology: "Offenser" is an older spelling of "offender," and both come from Latin "offendere," which literally meant "to strike against" or "to stumble upon." The Latin verb combined "ob-," meaning "against," with "fendere," meaning "to strike." So an offense began as a physical collision or stumbling block before it came to mean wrongdoing or the hurt it causes. The "-er" ending marks the agent, someone who does the action, and English had several spellings for such agent nouns. "Offenser" survived alongside "offender" for a time, but "offender" became the standard form, and "offenser" is now archaic. Dictionaries record it as a variant rather than a separate word, so it is mostly found in older texts.