Ambassador: a public minister sent from one sovereign to another, so that their person is represented. See Minister.

This word takes its origins from ambasciator , of low Latin, which in turn is thought to be derived from ambactus , an old Gaul word meaning retainer , customer , domestic servant or officer , according to Borel, Ménage and Chifflet, based on Saumaise and Spelman. But the Jesuits of Antwerp, in acta Sanctorum tome II page 128 , refute this opinion because the Gaul’s ambact ceased being used long before Latin’s ambascia was first employed. This is not, however, wholly accurate, as we find ambascia in Salic Law, chapter 19 , which was modeled off of ambactia , with the t pronounced as it is in action . Furthermore, ambactia comes from ambactus , which in turn comes from ambact. Lindenbroeg derives it from the German ambacht , meaning work , that is to say, the offering of a service or a legation. Chorier shares Lindenbroeg’s mind with regards to the same word, which appears in Burgundian Laws. In his Italian Dictionary, Albert Acharisius derives the word from the Latin ambulare , meaning walking or traveling . Finally, the Jesuits of Antwerp, in the passage in which we just cited them, claim that ambascia can be found in Burgundian Laws, and that it is from there that the words ambassicatores and ambasciatores , meaning the Envoys or Agents of a Prince or State to another Prince or State, come from. Therefore they think that, to the Barbarians who flooded Europe, ambascia meant the speech of a man who humiliates or abases himself before another, and that it has as its root the word abaisser , meaning to abase , that is to say from an or am and bas , meaning low .

In Latin we name this Minister legatus or orator . Yet the word ambassador certainly has a much larger significance than the word legatus had with the Romans, and apart from the protection bestowed upon one and the other by the law of the people, these two have almost nothing in common. See Legatus.

Ambassadors are either ordinary or extraordinary .