barrator

• barrater
• barretor

From Middle English baratour, from Old French barateor (“deceiver”), from Old French barater, bareter (“to deceive, cheat, barter”). Compare barter (intransitive verb).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbæɹətɚ/

barrator (plural barrators)

1. One who is guilty of barratry, vexing others with frequent and often groundless lawsuits; a brangler and pettifogger.
   • 1860, Matthew Bacon, A New Abridgement of the Law, volume 2, page 75:

     But by Hawk. P. C. bk. 1, c. 21, if such suits are merely groundless, and brought only with a design to oppress the defendants, such a man may as properly be called a barrator as if he had stirred up others to bring them.

2. One who abuses their office by dealing fraudulently.
   1. (obsolete) One who buys or sells political or ecclesiastic offices.
   2. A judge who accepts bribes.
   3. (maritime, admiralty law) A ship's master who commits gross fraud or barratry.
3. (archaic) A quarrelsome person, one who fights, a bully.
   • 1655, Thomas Stanley, “The Clouds of Aristophanes. Added (not as a Comicall Divertisement for the Reader, who can Expect Little in that Kind from a Subject so Antient, and Particular, but) as a Necessary Supplement to the Life of Socrates”, in The History of Philosophy. […], volume I, London: […] Humphrey Moseley, and Thomas Dring, […], →OCLC, 3rd part (Containing the Socratick Philosophers), Act I, scene iii, page 76:

     I care not though men call me impudent, / Smooth-tongu'd, audacious, petulant, abhominable, / Forger of vvords and lie, contentious Barretour, / Old, vvinding, bragging, teſty, crafty fox.

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.