terminator

Partly from post-classical Latin terminator (5th century), from Latin terminō; partly from terminate +‎ -or.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtəː.mɪ.neɪ.tə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtɝ.mɪ.neɪ.dɚ/
• Hyphenation: ter‧mi‧na‧tor

terminator (plural terminators)

1. Someone who terminates or ends something, especially (in later use) an assassin or exterminator. [from 17th c.]
2. (astronomy) The line between the day side and the night side of a moon, planet or other celestial body. [from 17th c.]
   • 2015, David Wootton, The Invention of Science, Penguin 2016, p. 218:

     Harriot, looking at the moon, saw the irregular terminator, the highlights and shadows, the mountain ranges and valleys that Galileo had described – and he also convinced himself that he saw Galileo's imaginary crater.

3. (biochemistry) A DNA sequence which causes RNA transcription to cease and an mRNA transcript to break off. [from 20th c.]
4. (electronics) An electrical device that absorbs reflection at the end of a transmission line.
5. (science fiction) An intelligent android created to destroy humans (after the 1984 film The Terminator).

• (astronomy): grey line, separatrix (the general term for such lines)

• antitremor

terminātor

1. second-person singular future passive imperative of terminō
2. third-person singular future passive imperative of terminō

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

terminator m pers

1. (obsolete) apprentice