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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

operator.

A person or organisation that operates a device, system, service, etc.

8 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɒpəˌɹeɪtə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɑpəˌɹeɪtɚ/General-American
  1. A person or organisation that operates a device, system, service, etc.

    countable · uncountable
    The drone crashed because of operator error.
    The new bus operator has promised to improve the frequency of rural services.
  2. A telecommunications facilitator whose job is to connect or otherwise assist callers.

    countable · uncountable
    To get an international line, you used to have to go through the operator.
    I kept getting "number unobtainable", so I called the operator to find out what was going on.
  3. A member of a military special operations unit.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A surgeon; one who performs medical operations.

    countable · uncountable
  5. The game of Chinese whispers.

    uncountable
  6. A person who is adept at making deals or getting results, especially one who uses questionable methods.

    countable · informal · uncountable
  7. A function or other mapping that carries values defined on a domain into another value or set of values in a defined range.

    countable · uncountable
  8. The administrator of a channel or network on IRC.

    countable · uncountable
  9. A symbol that represents a construct in a programming language and differs from a normal function in its syntax.

    countable · uncountable
  10. A kind of expression that enters into an a-bar movement dependency and is said to bind a variable.

    countable · uncountable
    In the sentence "What did Bill say he wants to buy?", "what" is an operator, binding a phonetically empty variable.
  11. A bus driver.

    countable · uncountable
  12. The company that operates a mine; often the same one that owns the mine.

    countable · uncountable
  13. A thief or charlatan.

    countable · slang · uncountable
  14. A major criminal.

    countable · slang · uncountable
  15. Someone who is successful at pursuing women; a player.

    countable · dated · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Latin operātor, from operor (“work, labour”). Equivalent to operate + -or.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.