Somonour

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A medieval church official who called people to appear before an ecclesiastical court to answer charges of moral offences
2. An archaic term for a court officer who served legal summonses, especially in the medieval English Church, to bring accused people before judgment
3. In medieval England, a minor church officer who delivered citations ordering wrongdoers to attend a church court for trial

Etymology: Summoner, the medieval church officer who cited people to appear before ecclesiastical courts, is a word that came into English from Anglo-Norman "somoner", which in turn traces back through Old French "somondre" to Latin "summonere", "to summon" or "to warn secretly". The sense that matters most is the job itself: summoners worked for bishops' courts, and their reputation for extortion made them a favourite target of satire. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" includes a summoner who is a corrupt, lecherous rogue, and the figure was so loathed that the word became a byword for a dishonest official. The English spelling "somonour" shows the Anglo-Norman route, with the "-our" ending reflecting the French pattern for agent nouns. The word was later reshaped toward the Latin-derived "summon", which is why modern spelling settled on "summoner". Because the job disappeared with the church courts' decline, the word now survives mainly in literary and historical writing.