Also 6 sorserer, -ar, sosserer, Sc. socerar. [f. prec. + -ER.] One who practises sorcery; a wizard, a magician.
α. 1526. Tindale, Acts xiii. 6. They founde a certayne sorserer. Ibid., 8. The sorserar Elemas … withstode them.
1535. Coverdale, Isaiah ii. 6. Whether it be in Sorcerers … or in calkers of mens byrthes, wherof ye haue to many.
a. 1548. Hall, Chron., Edw. IV., D iiij. Her frendes on the other syde sayd, that she was kept away, and her iorney empeched by Sorcerers and Necromanciers.
1610. Shaks., Temp., III. ii. 49. I am subiect to a Tirant, A Sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me Of the Island.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., III. xxxii. 197. The works of the Egyptian Sorcerers … were great miracles.
1727. De Foe, Syst. Magic, I. i. (1840), 6. Certainly then they did not take those magicians to be … dealers with the Devil, and sorcerers.
1769. Blackstone, Comm., IV. iv. 60. The civil law punishes with death not only the sorcerers themselves, but also those who consult them.
1816. Singer, Hist. Cards, 55. The Gipsies … exercised the craft of sorcerers.
1848. Gallenga, Italy (1851), 415. The sway exercised by a sorcerer over the demon to whom he has bartered his soul.
1865. J. H. Ingraham, Pillar of Fire (1872), 403. This was the place where the sorcerers and soothsayers held their mystic and fearful rites.
attrib. 1891. Zénaïde A. Ragozin, Media, Babylon & Persia (ed. 2), x. § 8. 269–70. The Shamans or sorcerer-priests of many Turanian tribes of our own day.
β. 1552. Abp. Hamilton, Catech. (1884), 50. Quhen saevir thow … seikis for ony help at ony wytche, socerar, cowngerar.
1596. R. H., trans. Lavaterus’s Ghostes & Spir., 28. There have bene many Magiciens, Sosserers, and Conjurers … who would easily counterfeit visions.
