operator

Borrowed from Latin operatōr, from operor (“work, labour”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɒpəˌɹeɪtə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɑpəˌɹeɪɾɚ/
• Hyphenation: op‧er‧ator

operator (plural operators)

1. One who operates.
   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 1, in The Celebrity:

     The stories did not seem to me to touch life. […] They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.

2. A telecommunications facilitator whose job is to establish temporary network connections.
3. (mathematics) A function or other mapping that carries variables defined on a domain into another variable or set of variables in a defined range.
4. Chinese whispers.
5. (informal) A person who is adept at making deals or getting results, especially one who uses questionable methods.
   • 1990, House of Cards, Season 1, Episode 1:

     Francis Urquhart: I think Lord Billsborough is starting to lose touch a bit.
     Tim Stamper: Shame. Used to be a hell of an operator in his day.

6. A member of a military Special Operations unit.
7. (computing) The administrator of a channel or network on IRC.
8. (computing) A symbol that represents a construct in a programming language and differs from a normal function in its syntax.
9. (linguistics) A kind of expression that enters into an a-bar movement dependency and is said to bind a variable.

   In the sentence "What did Bill say he wants to buy?", "what" is an operator, binding a phonetically empty variable.

• operator on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• aeroport, aëroport

• IPA^(key): /ˈopɛɾɑːtoɾ/

operator ?

1. surgeon (doctor who performs surgery)

operor +‎ -tor.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /o.peˈraː.tor/, [ɔ.pɛˈraː.tɔr]

operātor m (genitive operātōris); third declension

1. worker, operator

Third declension.

operātor

1. second-person singular future active imperative of operor
2. third-person singular future active imperative of operor

• operator in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• operator in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• operator in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

• IPA^(key): /opěraːtor/
• Hyphenation: o‧pe‧ra‧tor

opèrātor m (Cyrillic spelling опѐра̄тор)

1. (mathematics) operator

operator c

1. (mathematics, computing) an operator