coadjutor

plural coadjutors

1. An assistant or helper.First known use c. 1430–1450

   The mountaineer, with all his pulses aquiver, looked down into his coadjutor’s white, startled face.

   1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, pages 206–7

   2 more examples

   Then have the lady patronesses and their active coadjutors, whether noble or ignoble, all the work of beating up for recruits to go over again.

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 174

   Hitherto I have been but the witness, little more; and I should hardly think now to take another tone, that of your coadjutor, for the time, did I not perceive in you,—at the crisis too—a troubled hesitancy, proceeding, I doubt not, from the clash of military duty with moral scruple—scruple vitalized by compassion.

   1924, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.

2. ecclesiasticalAn assistant to a bishop.First known use 1549

   August then appointed Prince George III of Anhalt (who was both a theologian and a priest as well as a prince) to be his coadjutor in spiritual matters.

   2005, James Martin Estes, Peace, Order and the Glory of God

   1 more example

   When old age rendered any Bishop unable to perform his duties, the first example of which occurs AD 211, when Alexander became coadjutor to Narcissus at Jerusalem

   1842, John Henry Newman, The Ecclesiastical History of M. L'abbé Fleury