matador
Americannoun
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matadors
plural
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the principal bullfighter in a bullfight who passes the bull with a muleta and then, in many countries, kills it with a sword thrust; a torero.
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one of the principal cards in skat and certain other games.
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(initial capital letter) a jet-powered U.S. surface-to-surface missile.
noun
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the principal bullfighter who is appointed to kill the bull
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(in some card games such as skat) one of the highest ranking cards
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a game played with dominoes in which the dots on adjacent halves must total seven
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of matador
1665–75; < Spanish, equivalent to mata ( r ) to kill (perhaps < Vulgar Latin *mattāre, presumed derivative of Late Latin mattus soft, weak; cf. matte 1) +- dor -tor
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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:
His name is Mikel Merino, and he’s fast turning into Spain’s World Cup matador.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 11, 2026
This relentless bull market may finally have found its matador.
From Barron's ● May 15, 2026
Their enthralling matador and bull program set to “Paint it Black” eclipsed the season’s best they earned two days prior during the team event, but it wasn’t enough to earn elusive individual Olympic gold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2026
We meet Iñaki, the manager here who is appropriately more matador than barkeep.
From Salon ● Nov. 8, 2025
“You take him, Paco,” he told a fellow matador; “I don’t like the way he looks at me.”
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
One afternoon, when Manolete is around 11, he’s wandering past the bullfighting arena in Córdoba at the exact moment when matadors from all over Spain are filing in for an event.
From New York Times ● May 3, 2022
Wearing mandatory face masks and sitting in fumigated seats separated by stickers, fans watched matadors take on seven bulls in a charity contest to raise money for jobless bullfighters and other workers in the sector.
From Reuters ● May 2, 2021
Wagon-wheel chandelier, cereal boxes, dirty dishes, green shag carpet, orange vinyl couch patched with duct tape, two sad-looking boys dressed as matadors staring from a painting on the wall.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 29, 2018
Shown nearby are paintings of matadors, which have a child-like quality but were made by Picasso towards the end of his life in the early 1970s.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 26, 2017
Of the other two matadors, one was very fair and the other was passable.
From "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
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.
