provider
Americannoun
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providers
plural
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a person or thing that provides.
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a person who supports a family or another person.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of provider
Explanation
A provider is a person who gives someone something they need. If your parents both have jobs so they can feed you and buy you what you need, you can call them providers. Your mom's a provider if she works so she can care for you, put food on the table, and send you to school. There are other types of providers as well, although they all give you something you need, often a service. Your school is a provider of education, and the pharmacy around the corner is a provider of medication, makeup, and magazines. It's increasingly common to call your main doctor a "primary care provider."
Vocabulary lists containing provider
Father's Day Words
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"Principles of Business," Vocabulary from Chapter 5
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"A Raisin in the Sun," "My Father is a Simple Man," and "My Mother Pieced Quilts"
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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:
The index provider is taking feedback through April 2027 and will announce its decision by the end of June.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
A critical incident was declared at some London hospitals after the provider was targeted by Qilin on 3 June 2024, with blood transfusion services severely disrupted, operations cancelled and emergency patients diverted elsewhere.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
The Nvidia-backed compute provider has become a weather vane for one of the riskiest—and most highly leveraged—corners of the AI trade.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
The prime minister said the digital news provider should be lauded for consistently championing "democracy, human rights" and the UK's role on the world stage since it was launched in 1986.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
“What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. I’m very satisfied. Your father is a good provider and he is kind to me.”
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
The bond market provided its own warning on what may be overexuberance for an industry group riding the artificial-intelligence build-out — neoclouds, which are pure-play providers of cloud services.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026
That’s one reason federal law requires most providers to make healthcare communication meaningfully available in the language patients understand, via a human interpreter for spoken communication and a translator’s review for written information.
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
In a report last month, it surveyed nearly 200 creators, clinical providers, health brands, charities, and educators - 96% of whom said they had experienced restrictions in some form.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
Instead, OpenAI forged deals with the firms separately, and Katti struck additional computing agreements with providers such as Amazon Web Services to shore up OpenAI’s capacity.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
Health-care delivery is what doctors now do, along with hospitals and the other professionals who work with doctors, now known collectively as the health providers.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
