emulator
Americannoun
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a person or thing that imitates.
Until quite recently, emulators copied the behaviors of those higher in the social scale than themselves; nowadays, however, people in higher social classes are imitating those in lower ones.
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Computers. hardware or software designed to imitate a different piece of hardware or a different software system, in order to do the same work or run the same programs.
These JavaScript emulators allow you to run newer programs on older, incompatible operating systems.
Etymology
Origin of emulator
First recorded in 1580–90; from Latin aemulātor “imitator,” equivalent to aemul(us) “vying with” + -ator ( def. )
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.
The paper, "Effort.jl: a fast and differentiable emulator for the Effective Field Theory of the Large Scale Structure of the Universe," was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
From Science Daily • Oct. 30, 2025
Billie played it, and I ran it through this old SketchCassette like tape emulator, but again the marriage of this song about a doll and Billie playing a little toy keyboard.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 23, 2024
French IT consulting firm Atos' quantum computing emulator will be made available through cloud services provider OVHcloud's offer, the companies said in a joint statement on Thursday.
From Reuters • Jun. 9, 2022
Sony’s PlayStation Plus classic game emulator, meant to run PlayStation 1, 2, and Portable games, has already garnered some complaints, with Digital Foundry calling the current iteration “not good enough.”
From The Verge • May 27, 2022
I shut down the emulator and began to browse through my video files.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
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.
