designer
Americannoun
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designers
plural
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a person who devises or executes designs, especially one who creates forms, structures, and patterns, as for works of art or machines.
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a schemer, intriguer, or plotter.
adjective
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designed or created by or carrying a label or identification of a designer, especially a fashion designer, but often mass-produced.
designer jeans.
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created for intentional effect through chemical or genetic modification, as for a designer drug, or through crossbreeding, as for a designer dog.
noun
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a person who devises and executes designs, as for works of art, clothes, machines, etc
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(modifier) designed by and bearing the label or signature of a well-known fashion designer
designer jeans
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(modifier) (of things, ideas, etc) having an appearance of fashionable trendiness
designer pop songs
designer stubble
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(modifier) (of cells, chemicals, etc) designed (or produced) to perform a specific function or combat a specific problem
designer insecticide
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(modifier) (of an animal) cross-bred for a specific purpose, such as looks, temperament, or likelihood of causing an allergy
designer dogs
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a person who devises plots or schemes; intriguer
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of designer
Explanation
A designer is a person who plans how something will look. An architect is a designer of buildings, drawing detailed blueprints indicating what the structures should look like and how they should be built. The word designer came into English in the seventeenth century meaning "one who schemes." The word soon came to describe someone who figures out how something should look, especially something artistic. If you're reading a newspaper, a graphic designer planned how the text and images should look on each page. You might also be familiar with a fashion designer, someone who comes up with a vision for a garment and creates sketches to show what the finished product will look like.
Vocabulary lists containing designer
Occupations
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Engineering - Introductory
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Academy Awards, List 3
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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:
VEIR, a Woburn, Mass.-headquartered designer of superconducting power delivery systems for AI data centers, completed a $110 million Series C round.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
But former Puma and Umbro kit designer Rob Warner told BBC Sport last year that the economics behind shirt prices are more complex.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Fresh off the heels of Thom Browne’s New York Fashion Week presentation, where models and dancers embodied bugs and butterflies, the designer exchanged emails with Tyler Matthew Oyer about his creative process.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
The market-leading chip designer owns roughly 10% of both CoreWeave, which went public last year, and Netherlands-based Nebius.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
Sasha recommended a designer named Maria Cornejo, and I went to a boutique in Manhattan lined with her elegant gowns.
From "How Dare the Sun Rise" by Sandra Uwiringiyimana
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"Our designers are just up the road in Leamington Spa, engineers from across the West Midlands and further afield," Davey added.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
As the age’s potent mix of terror and delirium spun on, designers and illustrators proposed ways to live comfortably in space, underwater or in underground bunkers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
You’ll need engineers and coders, but also prelaw and political-science majors to clear the regulatory path, philosophers and marketing majors to write press releases, designers, nutritionists, etc.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
Diedrichs said unless the designers prompt AI to show realistic or diverse features, "it's going to give you an image that defaults to the average" data set of the "narrow" traditional beauty standards.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2026
The FTP employed nearly fifteen thousand writers, actors, directors, designers, and stage technicians.
From "Spooked!" by Gail Jarrow
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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.