Also 7 æmulator, emulatour. [a. L. æmulātor zealous imitator.]
1. One who emulates, in good or bad sense.
† a. A rival, competitor; also, one who enviously disparages. Obs.
1589. Greene, Menaphon (Arb.), 81. You are friendly emulators in honest fancie.
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., I. i. 150. An enuious emulator of every mans good parts.
1628. trans. Camden’s Hist. Eliz., II. (1675), 198. George Buchanan, his Emulatour … sets him forth … as one more mutable then the Chameleon.
1750. Johnson, Rambler, No. 54. The emotions which the death of an emulator or competitor produces.
b. A zealous imitator; one who strives to equal the qualities or achievements of another. Const. of.
1652. J. Hall, Height Eloquence, p. lxii. Hyperides is a great Emulatour of Demosthenes.
1738. Warburton, Div. Legat., App. 30. A happy emulator of the eloquence of Cicero.
1837–9. Hallam, Hist. Lit., I. ciii. § 128. A diligent emulator of Grocyn … was … Linacre.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 158. All these were lovers and emulators and disciples of the culture of the Lacedaemonians.
¶ 2. (In the Douay-Rheims Bible.) Used to render L. æmulator: a. One who is zealous for a cause, etc.; const. of. b. Applied to God: A ‘jealous’ being, one who brooks no competitor.
1582. N. T. (Rhem.), Gal. i. 14. I … being more aboundantly an emulator of the traditions of my fathers.
1609. Bible (Douay), Ex. xxxiv. 14. God is an emulatour. Ibid., 2 Macc. iv. 2. The … emulatour of the law of God.
