collector

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One that collects: a dust collector.
2. n. A person employed to collect taxes, duties, or other payments.
3. n. A person who makes a collection, as of stamps.
4. n. An electrode collector.
5. n. A solar collector.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who collects or gathers; especially, one who makes it a pursuit or an amusement to collect objects of interest, as books, paintings, plants, minerals, shells, etc.
2. n. A compiler; one who gathers and puts together parts of books, or scattered pieces, in one book.
3. n. A person employed to collect dues, public or private; especially, an officer appointed and commissioned to collect and receive customs duties, taxes, or toll within a certain district. Under the government of the United States these are of two classes, called collectors of customs and collectors of internal revenue.
4. n. Specifically In British India, the chief administrative official of a zillah or district, charged with the collection of the revenue, and also, except in Bengal proper, possessing certain magisterial powers.
5. n. One of two bachelors of arts in Oxford University who are appointed each Lent to divide the determining bachelors into classes and distribute the schools. Also called Lent collectors.
6. n. A person appointed to care for the estate of a decedent until letters testamentary or of administration upon it are granted.
7. n. In electricity, the upper plate of a disk or condenser, employed for collecting electricity; more generally, any arrangement for collecting electricity.
8. n. [plural] Same as collecting-hairs.
9. n. In the manufacture of artificial silk, a device for collecting and coalescing several collodion filaments from the spinning-apparatus, and then winding them upon bobbins.

Wiktionary

1. n. A person who or thing which collects, or which creates or manages a collection.
2. n. A person who is employed to collect payments.
3. n. electronics The amplified terminal on a bipolar junction transistor.
4. n. A compiler of books; one who collects scattered passages and puts them together in one book.
5. n. historical One holding a Bachelor of Arts in Oxford, formerly appointed to superintend some scholastic proceedings in Lent.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who collects things which are separate; esp., one who makes a business or practice of collecting works of art, objects in natural history, etc..
2. n. A compiler of books; one who collects scattered passages and puts them together in one book.
3. n. (Com.) An officer appointed and commissioned to collect and receive customs, duties, taxes, or toll.
4. n. One authorized to collect debts.
5. n. A bachelor of arts in Oxford, formerly appointed to superintend some scholastic proceedings in Lent.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a person who collects things
2. n. a person who is employed to collect payments (as for rent or taxes)
3. n. a crater that has collected cosmic material hitting the earth
4. n. the electrode in a transistor through which a primary flow of carriers leaves the region between the electrodes