sacrificer

plural sacrificers

1. Someone who sacrifices, one who makes a sacrifice.

   […] no sacrifice is valid unless the sacrificer lay his hand upon the head of the victim.

   1908, Helen Keller, chapter 3, in The World I Live In, New York: Century, page 35

   3 more examples

   Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, To cut the head off and then hack the limbs, Like wrath in death and envy afterwards; For Antony is but a limb of Caesar: Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]

   In this you’have made the Court the Antipodes, And will’d your Delegate, the vulgar Sunne, To doe profane autumnall offices, Whilst here to you, wee sacrificers runne;

   1631, John Donne, “To the Countesse of Bedford”, in Poems, London: John Marriot, published 1633, p

   So, when some brawny Sacrificer knocks, Before an Altar led, an offer’d Ox, His Eye-balls rooted out, are thrown to Ground;

   1717, John Dryden [et al.], “Book 12”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 418

   Synonyms: sacrificant, sacrificator, sacrificatrix, sacrificial priest, sacrificial priestess, sacrificing priest, sacrificing priestess