Other forms: suitors
A suitor is a man courting a woman with marriage in mind. A word from a world of chaperones and formal calls.
It is thoroughly dated in its romantic sense and survives mainly in novels and period drama, where a young woman has suitors. Business kept the word alive, oddly, since a company being bought is said to have suitors, meaning firms bidding for it, and that use is entirely current in the financial pages. The related verb is to sue, in its old sense of to plead, which is why lawsuits share the root.
Latin
secutor — follower, pursuer
Anglo-Norman
suytour
Middle English
sutour
English, today
suitor
From Middle English sutour, from Anglo-Norman suytour, seuter, from Latin secutor (“follower, pursuer”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 16 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word