BENEFACTOR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does benefactor mean? 

• BENEFACTOR (noun)
  The noun BENEFACTOR has 1 sense:

1. a person who helps people or institutions (especially with financial help)

  Familiarity information: BENEFACTOR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BENEFACTOR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who helps people or institutions (especially with financial help)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

benefactor; helper

Hypernyms ("benefactor" is a kind of...):

good person (a person who is good to other people)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "benefactor"):

benefactress (a woman benefactor)

bondsman; bondswoman (someone who signs a bond as surety for someone else)

bestower; conferrer; donor; giver; presenter (person who makes a gift of property)

donor ((medicine) someone who gives blood or tissue or an organ to be used in another person (the host))

fairy godmother (a generous benefactor)

good Samaritan (a person who voluntarily offers help or sympathy in times of trouble)

do-gooder; humanitarian; improver (someone devoted to the promotion of human welfare and to social reforms)

liberator (someone who releases people from captivity or bondage)

accommodator; obliger (someone who performs a service or does a favor)

offerer; offeror (someone who presents something to another for acceptance or rejection)

patron; sponsor; supporter (someone who supports or champions something)

provider (someone who provides the means for subsistence)

deliverer; rescuer; savior; saviour (a person who rescues you from harm or danger)

sparer (someone who refrains from injuring or destroying)

uncle (a source of help and advice and encouragement)

 Context examples 

He was an old friend of McCarthy’s, and, I may add, a great benefactor to him, for I have learned that he gave him Hatherley Farm rent free.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His endowments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him high among the benefactors of the convent.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It seems that Castalotte, our dear friend and benefactor, had been approached.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was my benefactor, and all my desire was to carry out his wishes in every particular.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his friend and benefactor Edward Hyde, but that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months, the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor’s household.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It seemed a poor return for all the courtesy which we encountered that we should deceive our hosts and benefactors, but under the circumstances we had really no alternative, and I hereby tell them that they will only waste their time and their money if they attempt to follow upon our traces.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But, after a while, they found that he considered them the benefactors, and could not do enough to show how grateful he was for Mrs. March's motherly welcome, their cheerful society, and the comfort he took in that humble home of theirs.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)