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

The company said it credits the champion and accelerator program in part with that increase.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026

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

From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2026

Tesla’s vice president of AI and software Ashok Elluswamy wrote in a post on X that the driver had manually pressed the accelerator pedal down.

From Barron's ● Jun. 26, 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

There are brake and accelerator pedals at her feet.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel

What Qualcomm has laid out is a full stack that spans CPU compute, AI accelerators, a new memory design and the high-speed connectivity that ties a rack together.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 25, 2026

Venture firms are scouting campuses for young entrepreneurs, with a growing list of active accelerators and fellowship programs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026

The Trainium custom accelerators have since played a significant part in AWS’s data centers, with clients like Anthropic paying hundreds of billions of dollars to use them.

From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 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

Particle accelerators are the microscopes of the subatomic world, and the more energy you put into those particles—the more powerful the microscope—the smaller the objects you can see.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife

Related Words

• particle accelerator