dispatcher

[ dih-spach-er ]

noun

1. a person who dispatches.
2. a person who oversees the departure of trains, airplanes, buses, etc., as for a transportation company or railroad.
3. dispatchers, Slang. a fraudulently made pair of dice; loaded dice.

Other Words From

• predis·patcher noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of dispatcher¹

First recorded in 1540–50; dispatch + -er ¹

Example Sentences

They pointed to a shortage of officers and dispatchers that resulted in long delays for 911 calls.

From Voice of San Diego

After the dispatcher didn’t seem to share his urgency, Trawick added, falsely, that there was a fire.

From ProPublica

When a police dispatcher sent officers Davis and Thompson to respond, the dispatcher noted that the address “was a sensitive location,” apparently referring to past mental health calls there.

From ProPublica

Those in essential jobs — police officers, nurses and doctors, EMTs, dispatchers and members of the military — are used to going without holiday meals with family.

From Washington Post

“It’s beyond their hands,” Reed told the dispatcher, according to a recording obtained through a public records request.

From Voice of San Diego

And then the voice of a dispatcher crackles over the radio with those alarming words.

From The Daily Beast

But Brooklyn was still Brooklyn, and at 1:45 a.m. a dispatcher could be heard saying on the police radio, “Shots fired by an MOS.”

From The Daily Beast

Bureaucratic inertia is, by long tradition, the most efficient dispatcher of scandals.

From The Daily Beast

At 12:02 p.m., Wilson called in his location and asked the dispatcher for backup.

From The Daily Beast

The 911 dispatcher patched in an ambulance dispatcher, saying, “I can hear him hitting her now.”

From The Daily Beast

As the boy turned he saw the big dispatcher's head sink between his arms on the table.

From Project Gutenberg

The head braves dashed in on Tom Porter, sitting in the dispatcher's office up-stairs.

From Project Gutenberg

The chief dispatcher looked at him steadily a long moment before answering.

From Project Gutenberg

I walked with the chief dispatcher into the airport waitingroom, dull with the listless air, not of unoccupancy, but disuse.

From Project Gutenberg

I was relieved from further ramblings by the arrival of the bus which was as laughable as the chief dispatcher's philosophizing.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• courier
• emissary
• go-between
• mediator
• prophet