timer
Americannoun
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timers
plural
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a person or thing that times.
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a person who measures or records time.
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a device for indicating or measuring elapsed time, as a stopwatch.
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a device for controlling machinery, appliances, or the like, in a specified way at a predetermined time.
Please put the roast in the oven and set the timer to cook it for two hours.
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(in an internal-combustion engine) a set of points actuated by a cam, which causes the spark for igniting the charge at the instant required.
noun
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a device for measuring, recording, or indicating time
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a switch or regulator that causes a mechanism to operate at a specific time or at predetermined intervals
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a person or thing that times
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of timer
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:
“Likely follow-up changes year or country; timer may be very short.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
"The systems are designed to withstand technical failures. If a computer crashes or power fails, the timer pauses automatically and resumes on another machine."
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
The second flaw is that corporate America is a poor stock-market timer.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
Prosecutors said one of the phones had a 15-minute timer ready to start, while another displayed an ominous message from an unknown number — “we will be awaiting your call.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2026
Finally, the timer went off, and I took the cupcakes out of the oven.
From "From the Desk of Zoe Washington" by Janae Marks
Bambi, a woman in her late 60s, began consuming conspiratorial media so religiously that she set timers to make sure she didn’t miss podcasts.
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2026
The market timers’ unseemly rush for the exits is illustrated in the accompanying chart of the average recommended equity exposure among a subset of short-term market timers who focus on the Nasdaq stock market.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026
The cooking part was over, the timers went off.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
Critics say the app’s countdown timers, amped-up chat feeds and other elements encourage impulse overspending.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
She thought Tim must have screwed up the timers.
From "Time Bomb" by Joelle Charbonneau
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.
