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executor

UK/ɪɡˈzɛkjʊtɚ/US/ɪɡˈzɛkjʊtɚ/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,846 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: executors

An executor is the person who carries out the wishes in a will. Named as executor, the executor's duties, act as executor.

It is a real job with real liability: gathering the assets, paying the debts and taxes, and distributing what is left, all in a defined order and all personally answerable. Most people name a family member and a professional. Note executrix, the old feminine form; and the difference from an executioner, which is a much older and quite separate word.

Definitions of executor

  1. 1nounexecutorThe person who carries out the wishes in a will.C1

    “As the executor of her father's will, she had to sell the house and share the money.”

executor is a legal role.

Where it comes from

Latin exsecutor comes from exsequi, to follow out — ex plus sequi, to follow. Sequence, consequence and execute come from the same following.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *sekʷ-

  2. Latin

    exsecūtor

  3. Anglo-Norman

    executour

  4. Middle English

    executour

  5. English, today

    executor

From Middle English executour, from Anglo-Norman executour, from Latin exsecūtor, agent noun of exsequor.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Crime & Law

Practise this word

executor in the wild

  • Anderson, and was his father's literary executor after his mother died in 1940.

    Adrian Conan Doyle

  • On his death, his sister Jean took over as their father's literary executor.

    Adrian Conan Doyle

  • An executor is a person responsible for executing, or following through on, an assigned task or duty.

    Executor

  • The probated will then becomes a legal instrument that may be enforced by the executor in the law courts if necessary.

    Probate

  • A close friend of Thomas Gray, he acted with William Mason as executor of Gray's will.

    James Brown (academic)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.