Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One that has charge of something; a caretaker.
  • noun A janitor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who has the care or custody of anything, as of a library, a public building, a lunatic, etc.; a keeper or guardian.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who has care or custody, as of some public building; a keeper or superintendent.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person entrusted with the custody or care of something or someone; a caretaker or keeper.
  • noun US a janitor (US); a cleaner

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun one having charge of buildings or grounds or animals

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Medieval Latin *custodianus, implied in custodianatus, from custodia ("a keeping, watch, guard, prison"), from custos ("a keeper, watchman, guard").

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Examples

Comments

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  • When Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas negotiated a solution for Jerusalem, they assumed a capital for each state, a Palestinian one in East Jerusalem and a Jewish one in the West, but a common municipal administration, and a new international committee, in which they would jointly participate, to act as custodian of the “Holy Basin,” in effect, the whole of the Old City. What are these—the municipality and the custodian—if not confederal institutions?

    February 9, 2018