candidate

Etymology

From Latin candidātus (“a person who is standing for public office”), from candidus (“dazzling white, shining, clear”) + -ātus (an adjectival suffix), in reference to Roman candidates wearing bleached white togas as a symbol of purity at a public forum. Equivalent to candid + -ate.

noun

1. A person who is running in an election.
   Smith announced he was the party's candidate for the next election.
2. A person who is applying for a job.
   All candidates who miss the deadline or make a spelling mistake in their applications are automatically rejected.
3. A participant in an examination.
   Candidates must remain silent for the entirety of the exam.
4. Something or somebody that may be suitable.
   After being presented with various suitors, she decided none of the candidates were the kind of man she was looking for.
   In the past two years, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has located nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates ranging from sub-Earth-sized minions to gas giants that dwarf our own Jupiter. 2013 May-June, Kevin Heng, “Why Does Nature Form Exoplanets Easily?”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 184
5. (genetics) A gene which may play a role in a given disease.

verb

1. (uncommon) To stand as a candidate for an office, especially a religious one.
   The matter of candidating for a pulpit is not a matter of difference between congregations and Rabbis, but between Rabbis themselves. 1906, Year Book of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, page 196
   Furthermore, the fact that a school principal has only been in a large school six weeks does not prevent his candidating for principal of a larger school with larger salary. 1917, William Harvey Allen, Universal Training for Citizenship and Public Service, page 154
   The report Shaping the Future also gives a set of learning outcomes for those people candidating for ordained ministry. These were also agreed by the Methodist Conference. 2014, Susan H. Jones, Listening for God's Call, SCM Press, page 74
2. (nonstandard, chiefly in jargon and non-native speakers' English) To make or name (something) a candidate (for use, for study as a next project, for investigation as a possible cause of something, etc).
   Performance comparison of solar energy conversion candidated for SPS. (From NASA, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston 1977.) 1982, Brian O'Leary, Space industrialization, CRC
   In this program if a processor becomes idle, then all feasible activities requiring that kind of processor will be candidated for scheduling. If the number of candidates is more than the number of available processors, activities with higher priority ... 1989, Institution of Electrical Engineers. Electronics Division, European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, 5-8 September 1989, Peter Peregrinus Limited
   Evaluate the maintenance costs of the software system in order to candidate it for evolution AA14. Evaluate the hardware platform used and the possibility of migrating the software system toward more economical platforms ... 2005, Khaled M. Khan, Yan Zhang, Managing Corporate Information Systems Evolution and Maintenance, IGI Global, page 308