accelerator

American  

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

noun

accelerators plural

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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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• accelerators
  plural

Etymology

Origin of accelerator

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

Explanation

An accelerator makes things go, or accelerate. The gas pedal on a car is an accelerator, but so is a machine that scientists use to speed particles up and smash them. An accelerator gets things going. In a car, the accelerator is the gas pedal that you mash with your foot when you’re ready to speed off into the sunset. In physics, a particle accelerator speeds off in a different way — it takes a particle, such as an electron, and speeds it up to almost the speed of light, and smashes it into an atom. Why? To see what it’s made of.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

accelerator accelerators

In May, Sam Altman announced that OpenAI would give $2 million in token credits to every startup participating in the accelerator program in exchange for equity in those companies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

As England hit the accelerator, India became ragged - Shivam Dube had an awful time in the field.

From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026

It was ready for the AI explosion, having already spent 15 years building an ecosystem made of four key parts: AI accelerator chips, CPUs, high-speed networking chips, and mature software that tied it all together.

From Barron's ● Jun. 28, 2026

Qualcomm’s high-bandwidth compute product is positioned against the high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, that nearly every leading accelerator depends on.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 25, 2026

By the time of the Bohemian Grove retreat, they were ready with a proposal for their own big accelerator.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

He noted the company’s products lines — including CPUs for agentic artificial intelligence, AI accelerators, custom-chip engagements and connectivity chips.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 24, 2026

SK Hynix, a key supplier of high-bandwidth-memory for Nvidia’s AI accelerators, posted a fivefold jump in quarterly net profit.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays are particles from space that slam into Earth with energies far beyond anything produced by human-built particle accelerators.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 9, 2026

The collaboration will help Broadcom offer customized accelerators and networking solutions to frontier AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI.

From Barron's ● Jun. 9, 2026

Every Monday evening at seven thirty sharp, the accelerators were turned off and the staff convened in the LeConte Hall library.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

Related Words

• particle accelerator