DISCOVERER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does discoverer mean? 

• DISCOVERER (noun)
  The noun DISCOVERER has 2 senses:

1. someone who is the first to think of or make something

2. someone who is the first to observe something

  Familiarity information: DISCOVERER used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DISCOVERER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who is the first to think of or make something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

artificer; discoverer; inventor

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

creator (a person who grows or makes or invents things)

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

patentee (the inventor to whom a patent is issued)

Instance hyponyms:

Langley; Samuel Pierpoint Langley (United States astronomer and aviation pioneer who invented the bolometer and contributed to the design of early aircraft (1834-1906))

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin; Zeppelin (German inventor who designed and built the first rigid motorized dirigible (1838-1917))

Mauser; P. P. von Mauser; Peter Paul Mauser; von Mauser (German arms manufacturer and inventor of a repeating rifle and pistol (1838-1914))

Maxim; Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (English inventor (born in the United States) who invented the Maxim gun that was used in World War I (1840-1916))

Cyrus Hall McCormick; Cyrus McCormick; McCormick (United States inventor and manufacturer of a mechanical harvester (1809-1884))

Mergenthaler; Ottmar Mergenthaler (United States inventor (born in Germany) of the Linotype machine (1854-1899))

Morse; Samuel F. B. Morse; Samuel Finley Breese Morse; Samuel Morse (United States portrait painter who patented the telegraph and developed the Morse code (1791-1872))

Eadweard Muybridge; Edward James Muggeridge; Muybridge (United States motion-picture pioneer remembered for his pictures of running horses taken with a series of still cameras (born in England) (1830-1904))

Elisha Graves Otis; Otis (United States inventor who manufactured the first elevator with a safety device (1811-1861))

Isaac M. Singer; Isaac Merrit Singer; Singer (United States inventor of an improved chain-stitch sewing machine (1811-1875))

Elmer Ambrose Sperry; Sperry (United States engineer and inventor of the gyrocompass (1860-1930))

Francis Edgar Stanley; Stanley (United States inventor who built a steam-powered automobile (1849-1918))

Charles Proteus Steinmetz; Steinmetz (United States electrical engineer and inventor (born in Germany) (1865-1923))

Fox Talbot; Talbot; William Henry Fox Talbot (English inventor and pioneer in photography who published the first book illustrated with photographs (1800-1877))

Nikola Tesla; Tesla (United States electrical engineer and inventor (born in Croatia but of Serbian descent) who discovered the principles of alternating currents and developed the first alternating-current induction motor and the Tesla coil and several forms of oscillators (1856-1943))

James Watt; Watt (Scottish engineer and inventor whose improvements in the steam engine led to its wide use in industry (1736-1819))

George Westinghouse; Westinghouse (United States inventor and manufacturer (1846-1914))

Sir Charles Wheatstone; Wheatstone (English physicist and inventor who devised the Wheatstone bridge (1802-1875))

Eli Whitney; Whitney (United States inventor of the mechanical cotton gin (1765-1825))

Orville Wright; Wright (United States aviation pioneer who (with his brother Wilbur Wright) invented the airplane (1871-1948))

Wilbur Wright; Wright (United States aviation pioneer who (with his brother Orville Wright) invented the airplane (1867-1912))

Fulton; Robert Fulton (American inventor who designed the first commercially successful steamboat and the first steam warship (1765-1815))

Alexander Bell; Alexander Graham Bell; Bell (United States inventor (born in Scotland) of the telephone (1847-1922))

Bessemer; Sir Henry Bessemer (British inventor and metallurgist who developed the Bessemer process (1813-1898))

Browning; John M. Browning; John Moses Browning (United States inventor of firearms (especially automatic pistols and repeating rifles and a machine gun called the Peacemaker) (1855-1926))

Burroughs; William Seward Burroughs (United States inventor who patented the first practical adding machine (1855-1898))

Bushnell; David Bushnell; Father of the Submarine (American inventor who in 1775 designed a man-propelled submarine that was ineffectual but subsequently earned him recognition as a submarine pioneer (1742-1824))

Cartwright; Edmund Cartwright (English clergyman who invented the power loom (1743-1823))

Daguerre; Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (French inventor of the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype (1789-1851))

De Forest; Father of Radio; Lee De Forest (United States electrical engineer who in 1907 patented the first triode vacuum tube, which made it possible to detect and amplify radio waves (1873-1961))

Eastman; George Eastman (United States inventor of a dry-plate process of developing photographic film and of flexible film (his firm introduced roll film) and of the box camera and of a process for color photography (1854-1932))

Edison; Thomas Alva Edison; Thomas Edison (United States inventor; inventions included the phonograph and incandescent electric light and the microphone and the Kinetoscope (1847-1931))

Din Land; Edwin Herbert Land; Land (United States inventor who incorporated Polaroid film into lenses and invented the one step photographic process (1909-1991))

Gatling; Richard Jordan Gatling (United States inventor of the first rapid firing gun (1818-1903))

Gillette; King Camp Gilette (United States inventor and manufacturer who developed the safety razor (1855-1932))

Goldmark; Peter Carl Goldmark; Peter Goldmark (United States inventor (born in Hungary) who made the first TV broadcast in 1940 and invented the long-playing record in 1948 and pioneered videocassette recording (1906-1977))

Charles Goodyear; Goodyear (United States inventor of vulcanized rubber (1800-1860))

Hargreaves; James Hargreaves (English inventor of the spinning jenny (1720-1778))

Hero; Hero of Alexandria; Heron (Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century))

Herman Hollerith; Hollerith (United States inventor who invented a system for recording alphanumeric information on punched cards (1860-1929))

Elias Howe; Howe (United States inventor who built early sewing machines and won suits for patent infringement against other manufacturers (including Isaac M. Singer) (1819-1867))

Jacquard; Joseph M. Jacquard; Joseph Marie Jacquard (French inventor of the Jacquard loom that could automatically weave complicated patterns (1752-1834))

Derivation:

discover (make a discovery, make a new finding)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Someone who is the first to observe something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

discoverer; finder; spotter

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

beholder; observer; perceiver; percipient (a person who becomes aware (of things or events) through the senses)

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

co-discoverer (someone who is the first of two or more people to discover something)

Derivation:

discover (discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of)

 Context examples 

Every great discoverer has been met with the same incredulity—the sure brand of a generation of fools.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Vintana means luck and refers to the good fortune its discoverer, researcher Joe Sertich, then of Stony Brook University, had in finding the fossil.

(Scientists discover fossil of bizarre groundhog-like mammal on Madagascar, NSF)

While many have shown that sleep helps the brain store new memories, others, including Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, have raised the possibility that sleep – in particular REM sleep – may be a time when the brain actively eliminates or forgets excess information.

(The brain may actively forget during dream sleep, National Institutes of Health)

I told him, “that in the kingdom of Tribnia, by the natives called Langdon, where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consist in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state, and their deputies. The plots, in that kingdom, are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle or divert general discontents; to fill their coffers with forfeitures; and raise, or sink the opinion of public credit, as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a general; a running sore, the administration.

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