detonator
Americannoun
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a device, as a percussion cap, used to make another substance explode.
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something that explodes.
noun
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a small amount of explosive, as in a percussion cap, used to initiate a larger explosion
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a device, such as an electrical generator, used to set off an explosion from a distance
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a substance or object that explodes or is capable of exploding
Etymology
Origin of detonator
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.
For more common parts, like the plastics and metals and wiring inside each detonator, there are also questions about how the years spent in warheads might affect their integrity.
From Seattle Times • Sep. 19, 2023
There's no need, since their coupledom is simply a detonator for the bombs Hill and Barris designed to go off in their families.
From Salon • Feb. 2, 2023
The detonator - often used as an emergency warning device to warn maintenance workers of approaching trains - somehow ended up at a store in Morecambe, Lancashire.
From BBC • Jan. 28, 2022
This industrious, experimental director is celebrated, after all, for taking an artistic detonator to sacred classics — by authors like Shakespeare, Molière, Miller and O’Neill — and letting the pieces fly.
From New York Times • Feb. 20, 2020
The President saw it too and the matter did not amuse him, for he realized it could be the detonator that would set off the powder keg on which his government was delicately perched.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
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.
