computer

A programmable electronic device that performs mathematical calculations and logical operations, especially one that can process, store and retrieve large amounts of data very quickly; now especially, a small one for personal or home use employed for manipulating text or graphics, accessing the Internet, or playing games or media.

Noun

A programmable electronic device that performs mathematical calculations and logical operations, especially one that can process, store and retrieve large amounts of data very quickly; now especially, a small one for personal or home use employed for manipulating text or graphics, accessing the Internet, or playing games or media.
- Meronyms: processor, microprocessor, CPU
- I spend around 6 hours a day at the computer.
- As well as saving the photos on my computer, I have them backed up on a USB drive.
Synonyms: 'puter box

Hypernyms: machine device

Coordinate Terms: calculator
A person employed to perform computations; one who computes.
- I haue read the truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number: The daies of Man are threescore and ten. - 1613, Richard Brathwait, The Yong Mans...
- By which manner of ſpeaking, this Propheteſs, who is ſo exact a Computer, would have us, I ſuppoſe, to conclude, that it would be a great miſtake to think that the number of Angels was either 9, or 11 for one of Men. -...
- Only a few years ago Mr. Powers, an American computer, disproved a hypothesis about prime numbers which had held the field for more than 250 years. - 1927, J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Essays, London:...
Synonyms: computator mental calculator human calculator
1. (by restriction, chiefly historical) A male computer.
  - Coordinate term: (female) computress
  Synonyms: computator mental calculator human calculator

Origin

From compute + -er. Doublet of cantore, counter, and kontor. The sense referring to people first appears c. 1613 in the works of the poet Richard Brathwait. The sense referring to a machine first appears c. 1897 in the magazine Engineering.

Verb

To use a computer.
- Cool he was computering, though. My dad, who is only in his 60's (mom too) thinks he is too busy to get connected to the internet. Oh well. More bandwidth for the rest of us, huh? - 1995 December 31, Roxanne Coyle,...
- I don't know if you have the same violent mood-swing issues that I do, but I was bustling around the house feeling very useful and good, and then I was sitting here computering for a while, and suddenly it was like a...
- I'm constantly computering, schlepping, stressing, and hauling ass like the rest of us. We are New Yorkers. - 2017 May 16, Alyssa Shelasky, “What I Discovered When I Outsourced My Back Pain”, in New York Magazine, New...
To send via computer.
- They had immediately computered the description out to the scores of law enforcement agencies in Southern California. - 1988, Marcel Montecino, The Crosskiller, New York, N.Y.: Arbor House; William Morrow, →ISBN, page...
- 'Nah. It was him hated it more than me. Fish out of water. Cops watching every move he makes. Memos about him computered to every nick in the land. He was too innocent for this hi-tech world, Bobby. Would've been back...
To transfer onto a computer; to computerize.
- I know there are storage warehouses in New York and Virginia and all over the place, St. Louis, and many other places, that keep these things. I think this is a very fertile area for this committee, and perhaps...
- Our sincere thanks are due to Antje Reuter, Jens Adam and Uwe Horstmann for computering the manuscript and Ralph Phillips and Kirsten Techmer for proof reading it. - 1983, H. Ahrendt, N. Clauer, J. C. Hunziker, K....
- It is also a pleasure to recommend the skill of Irit Markan who carried out the work of 'computering' the text, and of Ivor Ludlam who bore the labour of proof reading—both the English and the Greek. - 1988, Shimon...