Word.ws English Dictionary

abetter

/əˈbɛt.ə/US/əˈbɛt.ɚ/

abetter is the alternative form of abettor.

Meaning of abettor

Noun

abettor (plural abettors)

  1. One that abets an offender; one that incites, instigates, or encourages.
    • Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd!
      Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud:1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC
  2. A supporter or advocate.
    • […] when he recollected that, being there as an assistant, he actually seemed—no matter what unhappy train of circumstances had brought him to that pass—to be the aider and abettor of a system which filled him with honest disgust and indignation, he loathed himself […]1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 8, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC

Forms of abetter

pluralabetters

Origin of abetter

Inherited from Middle English abetter. By surface analysis, abet + -er.

Questions about abetter

What is abetter the alternative form of?
Abetter is the alternative form of abettor.
How do you pronounce abetter?
Abetter is pronounced /əˈbɛt.ə/ (UK).

Words near abetter in the dictionary

  1. abettals
  2. abettance
  3. abetted
  4. abettee
  5. abettees
  6. abetter
  7. abetters
  8. abetting
  9. abettings
  10. abettor
  11. abettors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: abetter (page history and authors); abettor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-abetter.wav.

Cite this entry: “abetter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abetter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.