† 1. (In L. senses) a. One who liberates a slave. b. One who lays claim to a slave. Obs.
1566. Painter, Pal. Pleas., I. 22. That Claudius the assertor … shoulde haue the keping and placing the mayde.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. ii. § 32. 482. Called Σωτὴρ and Ἐλευθέριος, Saviour and Assertour.
2. One who maintains or defends; a champion, vindicator, advocate.
1647. J. Hare, St. Edw. Ghost, in Harl. Misc. (1746), VIII. The Greeks and Gauls were … famous Assertors of their Liberties.
1872. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), IV. xvii. 96. Archbishop John was a rigid Assertor of ecclesiastical discipline.
3. One who makes a positive statement.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 206. Wherein indeed Aristotle playes the Aristotle, that is, the wary and evading assertor.
1797. Encycl. Brit. (Astronomy), II. 493/1. The imputation must return upon the assertor.
1853. De Morgan, in Bowen, Logic, ix. (1870), 286. Which the assertor is afterwards at liberty to deny.
