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Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of thinker
First recorded in 1400–50, thinker is from the late Middle English word thenkare. See think 1, -er 1
Explanation
A thinker is just what it sounds like — a person who does a lot of thinking. If you're a thinker, it may take you a while to make an important decision. You can use the noun thinker when you talk about a smart, scholarly person who's known for being an intellectual, or to describe someone who contemplates every choice at great length. Serious students are thinkers, and so are little kids who mull things over carefully, such as deciding which kind of doughnut to choose. Perhaps the most famous thinker is Auguste Rodin's bronze statue "The Thinker," which shows a man sitting, chin in hand, deep in thought.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Silver, a math-forward thinker, clearly believes in the expected value of the coin flip.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 24, 2026
What I try to instill instead is an intrinsic desire to grow as a thinker.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026
When he returned to America in 1789 he was no longer a cardboard architect but a spatial thinker.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
Influential iconoclastic thinker Richard Dawkins was then pilloried for suggesting that perhaps it already has.
From Slate ● May 25, 2026
A keynote speaker was Charles W. Colson, the born-again Watergate felon turned evangelical thinker.
From "Class Matters" by The New York Times
Festival organisers said the event will bring together "world-famous names alongside brand-new voices, reflecting the festival's commitment to celebrating today's leading names while championing the writers, thinkers and storytellers of the future".
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
Skidelsky’s brand of 21st-century Keynesianism exemplifies how the heralds of prominent thinkers often lose a sense of proportion when they elaborate on their heroes’ ideas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 31, 2026
Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century’s defining political thinkers, posited that modern life was making “being human superfluous”; her learned successor Lepore warns that our present bears out that idea.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
She draws from a lineage of Black thinkers who have spent decades restoring Reconstruction to its rightful place at the center of constitutional law.
From Slate ● Jul. 2, 2026
In the days that followed, I read other animal rights thinkers: writers like Tom Regan, James Rachels, Joy Williams, and Matthew Scully.
From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
