This is a memory from my early childhood. I was four years old and in junior kindergarten. There was an outdoor activity day at my public school, and there would have been team games. The one thing I remember of that day was of hearing my teacher - or another one - calling over a loudspeaker all “[team] captains and envalators”.
The word I have bolded is obviously a mishearing of something. But I have no clue of what the word might have been originally. The closest title I have come across is “invigilator”, but that is a person who monitors exams to make sure no one is cheating, and not anyone associated with sports.
Is there any official associated with sports, teams, games, or contests whose title ends with “-lator” or “-ator”?
Invigilating means supervising or monitoring. I know it’s most commonly used for exam proctors whose job is to prevent cheating in a test, but I don’t think the verb is semantically restricted to that. Couldn’t it indeed have been “invigilators” in the sense of kindergarten teachers who are supervising a group of kids during some physical activity? Etymologically, “invigilate” comes from a Latin word meaning “staying awake” - cf. a vigil, or “vigili del fuoco”, which is the modern Italian word for firefighters.
Not that I know of, but it’s such an english-sounding word that we should immediately make up a meaning for it. Then it will diffuse into the language, like ‘cromulent’.
After dining at a resaurant with an agreement at a nearby public garage, I was directed to the parking validator, a little machine that reads the ticket and updates the payment/gate system allow free exit.
