commentator
Pluralcommentators
- 1A person who gives a live, running description of a public event (especially a sporting match) for a mass-media audience.
The commentator called the final lap with rising excitement.
Veteran soccer commentators can read a play before it fully unfolds.
Similarannouncer, broadcaster, sportscaster, caller
Note
The voice in the broadcast booth, describing a match or public event as it happens. It takes a sport as a modifier or a for-phrase: a football commentator, or a commentator for football. Its neighbor the news pundit interprets events and offers opinion. This commentator narrates in real time, although a sports broadcaster's running description often shades into analysis.
- 2Someone who explains current events or expresses opinions about them, especially to a mass media audience.
A respected commentator weighed in on the new economic policy.
Cable news relies on commentators to interpret each day's headlines.
Similarpundit, analyst, observer, critic, columnist
Note
The pundit's meaning, and the one behind phrases like most commentators or some commentators, where the word stands for informed opinion at large. Christian Wolmar writes in 2025 of a runway plan "declared dead by most commentators." Unlike the live sportscaster, this commentator is valued for judgment rather than for description of events as they unfold.
- 3A person who makes a commentary (a set of explanatory or interpretive remarks) on some subject.
Each commentator brought a different perspective to the discussion.
The book collects essays from leading commentators of the era.
Similaranalyst, critic, observer, pundit, interpreter
Note
The general meaning, and its Latin roots explain how widely it spreads. Latin commentātor comes from commentāri, "to ponder, to study, to write upon," which goes back to a verb meaning "to think over, to invent." In Latin the word could name an author, an inventor, an interpreter, even a jailer. English kept the pondering and the writing-upon. Historians, legal scholars, broadcasters and pundits all inherit that core.
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- 5An author or compiler of explanatory notes on parts of the Bible.
The commentator devoted a whole volume to the Book of Psalms.
Early Christian commentators often read the text allegorically.
Similarexegete, expositor, interpreter
Note
In Christian scholarship the word names a writer who works through scripture passage by passage. It is the same craft as the scholar of texts, applied to the Bible. Where context leaves room for doubt, use biblical commentator. On its own, the word now readily suggests a broadcaster or a pundit.
- 6A person who compiles explanations of the law: specifically, in historical use, the relatively innovative European jurists of the 14th century who went beyond the earlier glossators.
The commentator adapted Roman law to the commercial disputes of his own city.
Fourteenth-century commentators reshaped how courts applied inherited legal texts.
Similarpostglossator
Note
In legal history the word names a school as well as a job. It refers to the fourteenth-century European jurists who were comparatively innovative and who moved beyond the glossators before them. The word is usually plural and takes the definite article, in a pairing of the glossators and the commentators. Randall Lesaffer's European Legal History (2009) says it was "well into the fourteenth century before the commentators came into their own."
Less common meaning
- 7A writer who compiles an annotated history; a historian or chronicler.
The commentator set down the city's founding in meticulous detail.
Ancient commentators preserved events that would otherwise have been lost.
Note
An obsolete, rare use that is worth recognizing but not worth reviving. In older writing, a commentator may simply be a historian or chronicler: someone who sets events down with annotation. Today's readers will hear a scholar or a pundit instead. When you mean this today, write historian or chronicler. It stays close to the Latin idea of writing upon a subject, which is traced under the general meaning.
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Origin
In form it comes through Middle English commentator from Latin commentātor ("author, inventor, interpreter"), built from commentārī ("to ponder, to study, to write upon"), which itself derives from comminīscor ("to think over, to invent"). In meaning, it was influenced by the English words comment and commentary.