Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who practices sorcery; a wizard.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Originally, one who casts lots; one who divines or interprets by the casting of lots; hence, one who uses magic arts in divination or for other ends; a wizard; an enchanter; a conjurer.
  • noun A fish of the family Nettastomidæ, found in the deep sea, having a fragile body and a thin skin charged with black pigment.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A conjurer; an enchanter; a magician.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun fantasy, folklore A magician or wizard, sometimes specifically male.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun one who practices magic or sorcery

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English sorser, sorcerer, from Old French sorcier, from Vulgar Latin *sortiārius, from Latin sors, sort-, lot, fortune; see ser- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French sorcier, ultimately from Latin sors ("oracular response").

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Examples

Comments

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  • SorcErER

    May 7, 2008

  • This spelling 'sorcerer' is strongly preferred to 'sorceror' (over 20:1 on raw Google hits), and the -or doesn't occur in BNP and isn't even mentioned in the OED as an alternative (though it does occur in the quotations with a sic against it).

    That actually surprises me: I thought it was one of those where fluctuation was more standard, as with adviser/advisor, conjurer/conjuror, imposter/impostor.

    March 24, 2009