Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

gladiator

UK/ˈɡlædiˌeɪ̯tə/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Other forms: gladiators

A gladiator was a fighter who battled for a crowd's entertainment in ancient Rome. Armed, trained, and mostly not free.

Most were enslaved people, prisoners or condemned criminals, though some volunteered for the money and the fame. They did not usually fight to the death, since training one was expensive, and the thumbs-up gesture we associate with mercy is probably a Victorian invention. The word comes from gladius, a short sword. Modern use is figurative and admiring, so a political gladiator relishes a fight.

Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain

Definitions of gladiator

  1. 1noungladiatorA fighter who fought for public entertainment in ancient Rome.C1

    “The museum has the helmet of a gladiator from Pompeii.”

Where it comes from

A gladiator is a swordsman. Latin gladius was a sword, so the name says what the man carried and nothing at all about what he was.

  1. Latin

    gladiātor

  2. English, today

    gladiator

Built from

  • gladius · Latin — sword

From Latin gladiātor, from gladius (“sword”). See also English gladius.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

gladiator in the wild

  • Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their lives and their legal and social standing by appearing in the arena.

    Gladiator

  • Irrespective of their origin, gladiators offered spectators an example of Rome's martial ethics and, in fighting or dying well, they could inspire admiration and popular acclaim.

    Gladiator

  • The series matched a cast of amateur athletes against each other, as well as against the show's own "gladiators", in contests of strength and agility.

    American Gladiators (1989 TV series)

  • The revolt began in 73 BCE, with the escape of around 70 slave gladiators from a gladiator school in Capua.

    Third Servile War

  • A gladiator was an armed combatant entertainer in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire.

    Gladiator (disambiguation)

1 / 2

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.