notary

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

• noun A notary public.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Corrupt forms of notory.
• noun In the earlier history of writing, a person whose vocation it was to make notes or memoranda of acts of others who wished to preserve evidence of them, and to reduce to writing deeds and contracts.
• noun A public officer authorized by law to perform similar functions, and to authenticate the execution of deeds and contracts, and the accuracy of copies of documents, and to take affidavits and administer oaths.

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

• noun One who records in shorthand what is said or done.
• noun (Eng. & Am. Law) A public officer who attests or certifies deeds and other writings, or copies of them, usually under his official seal, to make them authentic, especially in foreign countries. His duties chiefly relate to instruments used in commercial transactions, such as protests of negotiable paper, ship's papers in cases of loss, damage, etc. He is generally called a notary public.

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

• noun law A lawyer of noncontentious private civil law who drafts, takes, and records legal instruments for private parties, and provides legal advice, but does not appear in court on clients' behalf.
• noun A notary public, a legal practitioner who prepares, attests to, and certifies documents, witnesses affidavits, and administers oaths.
• noun law, Canada, US A lay notary public, who serves as an impartial witness to the signing of important documents, but who is not authorised to practise law.

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

• noun someone legally empowered to witness signatures and certify a document's validity and to take depositions