collector

• collecter
• collectour (obsolete)

Borrowed from Anglo-Norman collectour, from Late Latin collector, from Latin colligō (“to gather together”), from com- (“together”) + legō (“to choose”), from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to pick out, select”) (Watkins, 1969)

• enPR: kə-lĕk'tər
• (General American) IPA^(key): /kəˈlɛktɚ/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /kəˈlɛktə(ɹ)/
• Rhymes: -ɛktə(ɹ)

collector (plural collectors)

1. A person who or thing that collects, or which creates or manages a collection.

   He is an avid collector of nineteenth-century postage stamps.

   That old piano is just a big dust collector.

   • 2012 April 26, Tasha Robinson, “Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits :”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

     Hungry for fame and the approval of rare-animal collector Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), Darwin deceives the Captain and his crew into believing they can get enough booty to win the pirate competition by entering Polly in a science fair. So the pirates journey to London in cheerful, blinkered defiance of the Queen, a hotheaded schemer whose royal crest reads simply “I hate pirates.”

2. A person who is employed to collect payments.

   She works for the government as a tax collector.

   • 1668 July 3rd, James Dalrymple, “Thomas Rue contra Andrew Houſtoun” in The Deciſions of the Lords of Council & Seſſion I (Edinburgh, 1683), page 547

     Andrew Houſtoun and Adam Muſhet, being Tackſmen of the Excize, did Imploy Thomas Rue to be their Collector, and gave him a Sallary of 30. pound Sterling for a year.

3. (electronics) The amplified terminal on a bipolar junction transistor.
4. A compiler of books; one who collects scattered passages and puts them together in one book.
   • Addison

     Volumes without the collector's own reflections.

5. (historical) One holding a Bachelor of Arts in Oxford, formerly appointed to superintend some scholastic proceedings in Lent.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Todd to this entry?)

6. a major sewer which collects sewerage from a number of smaller branch sewers
7. A mafioso whose task is to collect protection money from small businesses

• bow collector
• collector's item
• stamp collector

• collect
• collection