accelerator

American  

[ak-sel-uh-rey-ter] / ækˈsɛl əˌreɪ tər /

noun

1. a person or thing that accelerates.

2. Automotive. a device, usually operated by the foot, for controlling the speed of an engine.

3. British. any two- or three-wheeled motor vehicle, as a motorcycle or motor scooter.

4. Photography. a chemical, usually an alkali, added to a developer to increase the rate of development.

5. Also called accelerant.  Chemistry. any substance that increases the speed of a chemical change, as one that increases the rate of vulcanization of rubber or that hastens the setting of concrete, mortar, plaster, or the like.

6. Anatomy, Physiology. any muscle, nerve, or activating substance that quickens a movement.

7. Also called particle accelerator.  Also called atom smasher.  Physics. an electrostatic or electromagnetic device, as a cyclotron, that produces high-energy particles and focuses them on a target.

8. Economics. acceleration coefficient.

9. Business. an enterprise that provides investment funding and short, fixed-duration mentoring and education programs to a select group of startups that apply for this, including access to networking, strategy coaching, collaborative workspace, etc.

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accelerator British  

/ ækˈsɛləˌreɪtə /

noun

1. a device for increasing speed, esp a pedal for controlling the fuel intake in a motor vehicle; throttle

2. Also called (not in technical usage): atom smasher.  physics a machine for increasing the kinetic energy of subatomic particles or atomic nuclei and focusing them on a target

3. chem a substance that increases the speed of a chemical reaction, esp one that increases the rate of vulcanization of rubber, the rate of development in photography, the rate of setting of synthetic resins, or the rate of setting of concrete; catalyst

4. economics (in an economy) the relationship between the rate of change in output or sales and the consequent change in the level of investment

5. anatomy a muscle or nerve that increases the rate of a function

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Etymology

Origin of accelerator

First recorded in 1605–15 and in 1930–35 accelerator for def. 7; accelerate + -or ²

Example Sentences

Marvell’s chips and accelerators should be even more valuable in a world driven by agentic AI, seeing as the technology requires continuous loops of reasoning, tool use, memory retrieval, and task coordination.

From Barron's

Chip demand is not only growing for the accelerators of artificial intelligence but also for the broader ecosystem, including CPUs, networking chips and co-packaged optics, they note.

From The Wall Street Journal

“Arm’s strategic move is less about catching up to the accelerator wave and more about inserting itself deeper into the architecture that governs how AI infrastructure actually runs.”

From Barron's

Several of the chapters, about particle accelerators and fusion reactors, take readers on cursory tours of facilities that have at best a tangential connection to space.

From The Wall Street Journal

This upgrade will take advantage of the High-Luminosity LHC accelerator to gather more data and explore rare particles in greater detail.

From Science Daily

Related Words

• particle accelerator