inventor
Americannoun
-
inventors
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of inventor
From Latin, dating back to 1500–10; see origin at invent, -tor
Explanation
The person who first comes up with a brand new idea or thing is its inventor. A woman named Mary Anderson, for example, is credited with being the inventor of the windshield wiper blade for cars. Lewis Latimer invented many things during his lifetime, and drafted the patent for the telephone (with fellow inventor Alexander Graham Bell). Oddly enough, Latimer's first work as an inventor was developing a restroom for train cars, in 1874. In the 1940s, actress Hedy Lamarr was the inventor of a communications technology that eventually made wireless technology, including cell phones, possible. In Latin, inventor means "contriver, author, or discoverer."
Vocabulary lists containing inventor
Business, List 1
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -er, -or
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for September 25–October 5, 2021
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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:
Immanuel was a polymath, an intermittently successful entrepreneur and an inventor.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
Colleagues paid tribute to a "pioneer, a researcher, an inventor" who made "anatomy accessible to the general public", but critics have accused him of voyeurism and profiting commercially from death.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Her name as a possible presidential nominee was first put forward in an open letter signed by sixteen prominent Hungarians, including the inventor of the Rubik's Cube, Erno Rubik.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
He was an accomplished artist, inventor and entrepreneur and the accidental inventor of the modern blast-furnace brick.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
Ms. Washington let me turn the classroom into a pretend baseball field for my oral presentation on a famous inventor.
From "A High Five for Glenn Burke" by Phil Bildner
Here’s what she’s learned: When technology doesn’t graduate beyond the demo stage, the problem is often that inventors and engineers are so enamored with their own creation that they assume it will find a home.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
"If it wasn't for Linda, we wouldn't have built this, I don't think," says Josh Behling, president of Wildfire Safety Systems and one of the inventors of the Fort.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2026
Airship captains and Victorian inventors gather Down Under.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 2, 2026
Siminoff said it doesn’t hurt that Mahan speaks the same language as many tech leaders, who are mostly just “pragmatic inventors and entrepreneurs” who want California’s leader to be “principled in thinking about fixing things.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2026
I’ve memorized a long list of female inventors.
From "The House That Lou Built" by Mae Respicio
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.
