Testators

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who has made a will or given a testament regarding the distribution of their estate after death
2. an individual who bequeaths property or assets to heirs through legal documentation
3. someone who expresses their final wishes and intentions concerning personal possessions and responsibilities in a formal declaration

Etymology: "Testators" is simply the plural of "testator," a person who makes a will. The singular comes from Latin "testator," meaning one who makes a will, and in Late Latin also one who bears witness. That Latin noun is built on "testari," which meant both to bear witness and to make a will, so the legal sense and the sense of giving testimony were once the same act. A person who wrote down their final wishes was, in effect, testifying to them. The root connection runs deeper than the will itself: "testator" shares its base with "testament," and both trace back to the idea of a witness. Anyone who has stood before a court and sworn to what they saw is doing the same thing a testator did when signing a will, bearing witness to a truth that others would later rely on.

Synonyms: testers, decedents