controller
Americannoun
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an employee, often an officer, of a business firm who checks expenditures, finances, etc.; comptroller.
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a person who regulates, directs, or restrains.
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British Aeronautics. a dispatcher.
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a regulating mechanism; governor.
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Also called control unit, processor. Computers. the key component of a device, as a terminal, printer, or external storage unit, that contains the circuitry necessary to interpret and execute instructions fed into the device.
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Digital Technology. a remote piece of hardware used to direct or control an electronic device.
a video game controller.
noun
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a person who directs, regulates, or restrains
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Also called: comptroller. a business executive or government officer who is responsible for financial planning, control, etc
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the equipment concerned with controlling the operation of an electrical device
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of controller
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English countrollour, from Anglo-French countrero(u)llour, Middle French contrerolleur, equivalent to contrerolle “duplicate roll” + -eur, -our, from Latin -ōr- or -ātōr- noun suffixes; see control, -or 2, -ator
Explanation
The device that's used to operate a tool or machine is a controller. When you play video games, you move your character around on screen using a joystick or controller. A controller is any object or person that controls something. An air traffic controller is a person who usually works in a control tower at an airport and is in charge of monitoring and directing pilots to make sure planes take off and land safely. Another kind of human controller, also known as a comptroller, is the person in charge of accounting and finances at a business or organization. These controllers have the important job of being in control of the money.
Vocabulary lists containing controller
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:
Audits by the county auditor-controller, city controller and an outside consulting firm found the agency wasn’t tracking how money was spent or whether housing providers complied with government contracts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
In the first, on June 13, a controller lost primary radar but failed to switch to backup radar, the FAA said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
In the new study, Zhou and colleagues used super-resolution imaging on neurons grown in the laboratory and found that the MPS behaves more like a cellular traffic controller, regulating all major forms of endocytosis.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 15, 2026
"There have been multiple reports as you can imagine," the controller adds on the radio.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026
He’s now studying to be an air traffic controller.
From "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky
They provide so much support for our planet, as decomposers, pest controllers, food for other animals and generally for keeping our systems clean and tidy.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
He added that "good pest controllers always, always kill them in a humane manner".
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
“We’ve had a fire in the cabin; it was a mobile phone that scorched the inside of the cabin,” a pilot on board the BA flight radioed to air-traffic controllers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
Last year, a series of radar and radio outages caused travel chaos at Newark, rattling controllers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
The Goddard computers also sent the flight controllers their projection of the remainder of the voyage.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
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.
