circuit rider
Americannoun
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(formerly) a minister who rode horseback from place to place to preach and perform religious ceremonies.
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someone, as a public official or a nurse, who travels throughout a given territory to provide services.
noun
Etymology
Origin of circuit rider
An Americanism dating back to 1830–40
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.
Ann Tapscott, the great-great-great granddaughter of the Rev. Peter Cartwright, the evangelist and Methodist circuit rider, lamented the loss of small congregations, like New Salem.
From Washington Times • Jan. 4, 2020
“The circuit rider in a lot of ways was lost,” Jason Felici said.
From Washington Post • Sep. 23, 2019
By the time he was eighteen, he was a circuit rider, an itinerant preacher hitchhiking from church to church.
From The New Yorker • Apr. 4, 2016
The book finds its own proper music when Harrigan writes about Lincoln as a circuit rider.
From Washington Post • Jan. 25, 2016
"He was that, and a proper, saddlebags-riding, torment-preaching circuit rider before he was made presiding elder at an astonishing early age," answered Miss Lavinia, a fading fire blazing up in her dark eyes.
From Rose of Old Harpeth by Daviess, Maria Thompson
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.
