processor

American  

[pros-es-er, proh-ses-] / ˈprɒs ɛs ər, ˈproʊ sɛs- /

Sometimes processer

noun

• processors
  plural

1. a person or thing that processes.

2. Computers.

   1. a controller, the key component of a computing device that contains the circuitry necessary to interpret and execute electrical signals fed into the device.

   2. a computer.

3. food processor.

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processor British  

/ ˈprəʊsɛsə /

noun

1. computing another name for central processing unit

2. a person or thing that carries out a process

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processor Scientific  

/ prŏs′ĕs′ər,prō′sĕs′- /

1. A part of a computer, such as the central processing unit, that performs calculations or other manipulations of data.

2. A program that translates another program into a form acceptable by the computer being used.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• processors
  plural

Etymology

Origin of processor

First recorded in 1905–10; process + -or ²

Explanation

A processor is a person or machine that goes through certain procedures to achieve a particular result. A milk processor milks cows, stores the milk, pasteurizes it, and bottles it before you buy it a store. There are many different kinds of processors, but what they all have in common is going through a process, a series of specific steps, to accomplish something. The food processor in your kitchen quickly dices pounds of onions, a task that would take considerable work to complete by hand. A word processor does the same for writing, allowing you to easily edit text. Computer processors control and move vast amounts of data. The Latin root means "advance or progress."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

processor processors

With only minimal fine-tuning, the optical processor achieved 94.80% accuracy and 97.61% sensitivity on previously unseen VEO-3 videos during experiments.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 1, 2026

Massive volumes of video could initially pass through the parallel optical processor.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 1, 2026

Hormel Foods HRL -0.60%decrease; down pointing triangle has struck a deal to buy Brakebush Brothers, a family-owned value-added processor of chicken products, for about $1.055 billion.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2026

U.S. export controls forced Nvidia to take a $4.5 billion charge last year related to its China-focused H20 processor.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026

“LORE uses the term self-sufficient museum. They have several of these. This is an older version of a virtual assistant. She uses a projection processor, as opposed to an integrated processor.”

From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas

Nasdaq-listed CoreWeave—which, like Firmus, owns processors as well as the buildings that house them—is valued at about US$37 billion and has more than 50 centers in operation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

It also sees Nvidia, whose data center processors power the AI revolution, make a move into personal computing, a sector dominated for decades by chips from Intel and Qualcomm.

From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026

The processors can be “bought in the secondary market at a spot price, and are also made by Chinese companies,” Luria noted.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 28, 2026

Counterintuitively, this means that organizations like Cornerstone can repurpose older silicon manufacturing equipment used for earlier generations of processors.

From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026

But even the best software isn’t smart enough to assign trees reliably, so writers cannot offload the task of minding the tree onto their word processors.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker