operator: Meaning and Definition of

op•er•a•tor

Pronunciation: (op'u-rā"tur), [key]
— n.
  1. a person who operates a machine, apparatus, or the like: a telegraph operator.
  2. a person who operates a telephone switchboard, esp. for a telephone company.
  3. a person who manages a working or industrial establishment, enterprise, or system: the operators of a mine.
  4. a person who trades in securities, esp. speculatively or on a large scale.
  5. a person who performs a surgical operation; a surgeon.
  6. a differential operator.
    1. a symbol for expressing a mathematical operation.
    2. a function, esp. one transforming a function, set, etc., into another:a differential operator.
    1. a person who accomplishes his or her purposes by devious means; faker; fraud.
    2. a person who is adroit at overcoming, avoiding, or evading difficulties, regulations, or restrictions.
    3. a person who is extremely successful with or smoothly persuasive to members of the opposite sex.
  7. a segment of DNA that interacts with a regulatory molecule, preventing transcription of the adjacent region.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
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