Definition of "executant" [ex•ec•u•tant]

• One who performs or carries out, especially a skilled performer: The dancer is the choreographer's executant. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Christmas were somewhat as follows: From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head annually — just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper"
• "Archbishop of Canterbury, is transformed, as if by irreverent enchantment of the dissenting interest, into A Favourite Terrier, or Cattle Grazing; and the most extraordinary work of art in the list described by the Bleater, is coolly sponged out altogether, and asserted never to have had existence at all, even in the most shadow thoughts of its executant!"
• "The whole introduction, in his opinion, was an effort on the part of the general to depreciate the work of others and to portray himself as the sole designer and executant of the Manassas triumph."