INVENTOR

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does inventor mean? 

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

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

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• INVENTOR (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 ("inventor" is a kind of...):

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

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

patentee (the inventor to whom a patent is issued)

Instance hyponyms:

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

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))

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

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))

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

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))

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

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:

invent (come up with (an idea, plan, explanation, theory, or principle) after a mental effort)

 Context examples 

Creations of the mind, such as those created by musicians, authors, artists, and inventors.

(Intellectual Property, NCI Thesaurus)

He was a man loved and honoured by all who knew him; and in his youth was, I have heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much patronised on Derby night.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

This success came on the second attempt by the inventor to cross the Channel.

(French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard, Wikinews)

But there have been inventors who were not eccentric and who starved while they sought to invent practical things; and sometimes, it is recorded, they succeeded.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

As for its inventor, beyond an increasing deafness and the movement of the lips growing fainter and fainter, there had been little change in his condition for a week.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Also a basket hung over the back of a chair, in which he vainly tried to hoist his too confiding sister, who, with feminine devotion, allowed her little head to be bumped till rescued, when the young inventor indignantly remarked, Why, Marmar, dat's my lellywaiter, and me's trying to pull her up.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I made my humblest acknowledgment to this illustrious person, for his great communicativeness; and promised, if ever I had the good fortune to return to my native country, that I would do him justice, as the sole inventor of this wonderful machine; the form and contrivance of which I desired leave to delineate on paper, as in the figure here annexed.

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

There have been eccentric inventors, starving their families while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The inventor previously presented the device at the Bastille Day military parade earlier this year.

(French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard, Wikinews)

On 4 August 2019, French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crossed the English Channel on a jet-powered freeflight flying device propelled by turbines and attached to his feet, called Flyboard Air.

(French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard, Wikinews)