captor
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of captor
1640–50; < Late Latin, equivalent to cap ( ere ) to take + -tor -tor
Explanation
Someone who catches a person or animal and keeps them confined or imprisoned is a captor. Visiting the zoo, you might find yourself wondering if the lions see the zookeepers as friends or as captors. The word captor sounds a little bit like capture, and it's no coincidence — they're both rooted in the Latin capere, "to take, hold, or seize." So if you capture a cricket and keep it in a little cage, you are its captor. And, when a police force captures a criminal and puts them in prison, the police become captors too. The original meaning of captor was actually "a censor."
Vocabulary lists containing captor
Prisoner B-3087
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The Suffix -or, Part 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Since her disappearance, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have posted multiple videos on social media, including making direct appeals to their mother's captor.
From BBC • Mar. 27, 2026
Under the fugitive slave laws, the burden of proof belonged not to the captor but to the captured.
From Slate • Jul. 28, 2025
One can’t fault Harrison, whose Zephyr spends much of the movie in a battle of wills with her captor.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 6, 2025
While the BBC cannot independently verify their stories, almost all say they are petrified that one day, they might bump into a captor on the street or on a bus.
From BBC • Apr. 15, 2025
He was intact, wrapped tightly around the leg of his female captor, head buried against her shin.
From "Endangered" by Eliot Schrefer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
