arbiter : M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for January 17 is:

arbiter \AHR-buh-ter\ noun
1 : a person with power to decide a dispute : judge
*2 : a person or agency whose judgment or opinion is considered authoritative

Example sentence:
Rather than looking to famous fashion designers as arbiters of style, Amy prefers to make up her own mind about what is hip.

Did you know?
There's no disputing it -- "arbiter" and "arbitrator" are synonyms. But judging by usage, "arbitrator" has been appointed the preferred term for legal situations and is the one more likely to be used in the sense "a person chosen by two parties in a dispute to decide their differences." "Arbiter" is the more literary of the two and is identical to the Latin "arbiter" (meaning "judge"), the grandparent of both terms. "Arbitrator" and "arbiter" each came to us via Anglo-French; first we picked up "arbiter" in the late 14th century, and "arbitrator" followed less than four decades later. And in case you were wondering -- yes, the Latin "arbiter" is also an ancestor of "arbitrary" and "arbitrate."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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