judge

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

• intransitive verb To form an opinion or estimation of after careful consideration.
• intransitive verb Law To hear and decide on in a court of law.
• intransitive verb To pass sentence on; condemn.
• intransitive verb To act as one appointed to decide the winners of.
• intransitive verb To determine or declare after consideration or deliberation.
• intransitive verb Informal To have as an opinion or assumption; suppose.
• intransitive verb Bible To govern; rule. Used of an ancient Israelite leader.
• intransitive verb To form an opinion or evaluation.
• intransitive verb To act or decide as a judge.
• noun One who judges, especially.
• noun One who makes estimates as to worth, quality, or fitness.
• noun Law A public official who hears and decides cases brought in court.
• noun Law A public official who hears and decides cases or matters in a forum other than a court, such as an administrative proceeding.
• noun One appointed to decide the winners of a contest or competition.
• noun A leader of the Israelites during a period of about 400 years between the death of Joshua and the accession of Saul.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To govern or regulate by right of authority, as the judges of Israel who held office between Joshua and the kings.
• noun In angling, the name of an artificial fly.
• To act as a judge; pronounce upon the merits of a cause or controversy; pass judgment.
• To form a judgment or mental assertion; say to one's self that so and so is or is not true; make up one's mind about the truth of a matter.
• To make a critical determination; decide as to what is true or false, good or bad, genuine or spurious, etc.; estimate the value or magnitude of anything.
• To hear and determine authoritatively, as a cause or controversy; examine into and decide upon.
• To try at the bar of justice; pass judgment upon.
• To pass sentence upon; adjudge; sentence; condemn.
• To form a judgment or opinion of or upon; decide upon critically; estimate.
• To hold as an opinion; esteem; consider.
• If men judge that learning should be referred to action, they judge well.
• Synonyms To account, hold, believe, deem, consider, regard.
• noun A public officer invested with authority to hear and determine causes, civil or criminal, and to administer justice between parties in courts held for the purpose; a public officer appointed to exercise the judicial power; a justice; a magistrate.
• noun [capitalized] A title of God as supreme arbiter of all things.
• noun In a more general sense, any one intrusted with authority to arbitrate on the rights of others: as, no man ought to be a, judge in his own cause.
• noun A person appointed to decide in any competition or contest; an authorized arbiter: as, to make one a, judge in a dispute; the, judges of a competitive exhibition.
• noun A person skilled in determining the true nature or quality of anything; one qualified or able to discriminate, as between good and bad, right and wrong, genuine and spurious, etc.; a connoisseur; an expert: as, a judge of wines or of paintings; a judge of character or of qualifications.
• noun In Jewish hist., an administrative officer who stood at the head of the Hebrew state in the intermediate period between the time of Moses and Joshua and that of the kings.
• noun [capitalized] plural The seventh book of the Bible, properly the “Book of Judges” (Liber Judicum, Vulgate).
• noun In coal-mining, the measuring-rod with which the depth of a holing or jad is ascertained.
• noun The term has sometimes been employed to designate a special judge, or one of a class of special judges, added to a court for the purpose of holding trials, but without being a member of a court in banc.
• noun A chief judge.
• noun Synonyms and Judge, Umpire, Referee, Arbitrator; justice, arbiter. Judge is a technical word for a legal officer with duties clearly defined: as, a judge of probate; or a general word for a person empowered to arbitrate or award: as, to act as judge at contests, an exhibition of paintings, a competitive examination, etc. Umpire is a name applied to the person selected to decide all disputed points connected with a public contest: as, the umpire in a game of base-ball. Referee is somewhat more loosely used. In legal usage referee means one to whom a pending cause or some branch of it is referred, with the sanction of the court, to act in place of the judge, or in aid of his determination, the result being a decision of the court; while an arbitrator is one to whom a question is referred simply by agreement of the parties, without sanction of the court. The reference of a pending cause to an arbitrator takes it out of court, and precludes further proceedings in court. In a boxing-match, boat-race, foot-ball game, etc., the referee is the same as an umpire. Sometimes an umpire is legally appointed to decide where arbitrators disagree. Thus all these words may have technical senses when used as legal terms.

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

• noun (Law) A public officer who is invested with authority to hear and determine litigated causes, and to administer justice between parties in courts held for that purpose.
• noun One who has skill, knowledge, or experience, sufficient to decide on the merits of a question, or on the quality or value of anything; one who discerns properties or relations with skill and readiness; a connoisseur; an expert; a critic.
• noun A person appointed to decide in a trial of skill, speed, etc., between two or more parties; an umpire.
• noun (Jewish Hist.) One of the supreme magistrates, with both civil and military powers, who governed Israel for more than four hundred years.
• noun The title of the seventh book of the Old Testament; the Book of Judges.
• noun (Mil. & Nav.) a person appointed to act as prosecutor at a court-martial; he acts as the representative of the government, as the responsible adviser of the court, and also, to a certain extent, as counsel for the accused, when he has no other counsel.
• noun in the United States, the title of two officers, one attached to the War Department and having the rank of brigadier general, the other attached to the Navy Department and having the rank of colonel of marines or captain in the navy. The first is chief of the Bureau of Military Justice of the army, the other performs a similar duty for the navy. In England, the designation of a member of the ministry who is the legal adviser of the secretary of state for war, and supreme judge of the proceedings of courts-martial.
• transitive verb To hear and determine by authority, as a case before a court, or a controversy between two parties.
• transitive verb To examine and pass sentence on; to try; to doom.