legislator
Americannoun
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a person concerned with the making or enactment of laws
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a member of a legislature
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of legislator
1595–1605; < Latin phrase lēgis lātor a law's bringer (i.e., proposer), equivalent to lēgis (genitive of lēx law) + lātor bringer ( lā ( tus ), suppletive past participle of ferre to bring + -tor -tor
Explanation
A legislator makes laws. Congress is full of legislators. You have several who represent you at both the state and national level. Don't confuse a legislator with the legislature. Whereas the latter refers to the group such as the Congress, a legislator is a member of the group. At the national level, senators and representatives are given the task of writing our laws. States sometimes have different names for their two legislative houses, but the set-up is similar. The United States may be the world's oldest democracy, but legislators have been around nearly forever — the Romans had them.
Vocabulary lists containing legislator
Commonly Confused Words, List 3
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Commonly Confused Words, List 5
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The Executive Branch: The Presidency and Vice Presidency
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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.
See Examples For:
Adalah said Abu Shehadeh's decades of public life as a human rights activist, legislator and party leader demonstrated his "consistent and unequivocal opposition to violence of any kind".
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
Byron Sher, a Stanford law professor turned California legislator who wrote some of the state’s most far-reaching environmental laws, died Saturday.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026
Douglass may not have held a role as a judge, legislator, or even enfranchised citizen, yet he nonetheless played a pivotal role in shaping the nation’s understanding of equal citizenship in the Civil War era.
From Slate ● Jul. 24, 2026
European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde warned central bank independence is at risk, requiring voter and legislator support.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
“It’s just the way we are,” says Jorge Zarif Zetuna Curioca, a legislator from Ixtepec.
From "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario
Gov. Kathy Hochul is demanding that legislators make changes to a law critics say protects abusers if a victim knowingly drank.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
So you had legislators in Texas that talked about that ruling and said, “We can’t have an electrocution in someone’s living room.”
From Slate ● Oct. 6, 2026
Martinez told legislators at a hearing this year how his wife had found a lump in her breast and asked for an appointment with her longtime caregiver at Kaiser to examine it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026
Mythos also showed the ability to independently escape what is known as the sandbox environment, setting off a debate among regulators, legislators and businesses about AI's potential dangers.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026
From the moment Burn and his fellow legislators arrived in Nashville, women on both sides of the issue had been pressuring them for their votes.
From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling
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.
