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magistrate

nouncommon in dialogue

  • //ˈmæd͡ʒ.ɪˌstɹeɪt//
  • //ˈmæd͡ʒ.ɪ.stɹɪt//

A judicial officer with limited authority to administer and enforce the law. A magistrate's court may have jurisdiction in civil or criminal cases, or both.

noun

  1. 1

    A judicial officer with limited authority to administer and enforce the law. A magistrate's court may have jurisdiction in civil or criminal cases, or both.

    In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily have been redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magistrate.

  2. 2

    historicalA high official of the state or a municipality in ancient Greece or Rome.

  3. 3

    A comparable official in medieval or modern institutions.

    Like other civil servants, Ashok Kumar started his career as an Assistant Collector cum Sub-divisional Magistrate.

  4. 4

    A master's degree.

Etymology

From Middle English magistrat, maiestrat (“magistrate; magistracy”), borrowed from Latin magistrātus. See also -ate (forms nouns denoting rank or office).

Forms

plural
magistrates
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).