discriminator
noun
discriminator is a noun meaning “A person who differentiates things or concepts” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-I-S-C-R-I-M-I-N-A-T-O-R, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of discriminator is discriminators.
What does discriminator mean?
noun
- 1
A person who differentiates things or concepts.
keen discriminator
- 2
A person who acts unfairly through prejudice.
I am not a discriminator
- 3
A test or variable, etc. that serves to distinguish between different things.
Colour is not an effective discriminator when it comes to the spiciness of food.
- 4
Any of several electronic devices that convert some property of a signal into an amplitude whose value is proportional to the difference between the value of the input signal and that of a standard.
- 5
A feature of the seller's offering that differs from a competitor's offering and is important to the buyer in question.
An especially strong warranty can be a discriminator in some marketplaces.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of discriminator
- discriminators plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is discriminator?
Discriminator appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 119,826th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Discriminator in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense person who discriminates:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | discriminateur, discriminatrice |
| Portuguese | discriminador, discriminadora |
| Spanish | discriminador, discriminadora |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does discriminator come from?
From discriminate + -or.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).