[agent-n. in L. form from continuāre to CONTINUE: see -OR; cf. mod.F. continuateur.]
1. One who continues, or maintains continuity.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., III. xvi. A way of production which should … contrive the continuation of the species by the destruction of the continuator.
1848. W. H. Kelly, trans. L. Blanc’s Hist. Ten Y., I. 247. Louis Philippe I. … that dubious continuator of the thirty-five Capets.
1852. Newland, Lect. Tractar., 35. Continuators of the apostolic succession indeed, but without spiritual authority.
1866. Ferrier, Grk. Philos., I. xii. 363. Aristotle … was rather fitted to found a new dynasty in philosophy … than to be the continuator of an old one.
2. One who continues or carries forward work begun by another; esp. one who writes a continuation to a literary work.
1656. Heylin, Extraneus Vapulans, 100. The Continuator of Stowes Chronicle.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 34. The Author Baker, and his Continuator Philipps.
1766. Amory, Buncle (1770), III. 89. Gabriel Cossart, the continuator, published the other seven volumes in 1672.
1865. M. Arnold, Ess. Crit., v. 153. Heine … is the most important German successor and continuator of Goethe in Goethe’s most important line of activity.
1876. Freeman, Norm. Conq., V. xxv. 577. In our own Florence, in his southern continuator and his northern interpolator, we read the unvarnished tale.
