Definitions

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

  • noun One that pardons.
  • noun A medieval ecclesiastic or layman authorized to raise money for religious works by granting papal indulgences to contributors.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who pardons or forgives; one who absolves an offender from punishment or blame.
  • noun One who is licensed to sell papal indulgences or pardons.

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

  • noun One who pardons.
  • noun obsolete A seller of indulgences.

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

  • noun historical a medieval cleric who would sell pardons and indulgences

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

  • noun a medieval cleric who raised money for the church by selling papal indulgences
  • noun a person who pardons or forgives or excuses a fault or offense

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

to pardon + -er.

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Examples

  • This meager use of the pardon power isn't only a shirking of an important presidential duty, as former Maryland governor and prolific pardoner Robert Ehrlich argued in a recent Baltimore Sun editorial; it also makes no sense.

    Julie Stewart: Mercy for People, Not Just Turkeys Julie Stewart 2011

  • Leaving Nora to rest in bed, Albright and Leonard found the local pardoner, and bought a tooth of Saint George for a discount price before returning to the manor.

    The Kurse of Kain « A Fly in Amber 2008

  • FOREMAN: Newly pardoned turkeys have been known to misbehave, flapping their wings or even try to peck their pardoner.

    CNN Transcript Nov 25, 2009 2009

  • It was a few weeks ago in fact that the White House was saying, "Look, it doesn't matter how many troops you send, if you don't have a legitimate, credible pardoner in place."

    CNN Transcript Nov 1, 2009 2009

  • The whole -- McChrystal says you have to have a credible pardoner.

    CNN Transcript Oct 30, 2009 2009

  • The characters which appeared and disappeared before the amused and interested audience, were those which fill the earlier stage in all nations — old men, cheated by their wives and daughters, pillaged by their sons, and imposed on by their domestics, a braggadocia captain, a knavish pardoner or quaestionary, a country bumpkin and a wanton city dame.

    The Abbot 2008

  • These were soon, however, renewed at the expense of the jester himself, when the insulted maiden extricated, ere the paroxysm was well over, one hand from the folds of her mantle, and bestowed on the wag a buffet, which made him reel fully his own length from the pardoner, and then acknowledge the favour by instant prostration.

    The Abbot 2008

  • Ay, or it may be some pilgrim with a budget of lies from Saint James of Compostella, or Our Lady of Loretto; or thou mayest be some pardoner with his budget of relics from Rome, forgiving sins at a penny a-dozen, and one to the tale. —

    The Monastery 2008

  • At length the pardoner pulled from his scrip a small phial of clear water, of which he vaunted the quality in the following verses: —

    The Abbot 2008

  • One of the principal personages in the comic part of the drama was, as we have already said, a quaestionary or pardoner, one of those itinerants who hawked about from place to place relics, real or pretended, with which he excited the devotion at once, and the charity of the populace, and generally deceived both the one and the other.

    The Abbot 2008

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