operator

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One who operates a machine or device: a switchboard operator.
2. n. The owner or manager of a business or an industrial enterprise.
3. n. One who deals aggressively in stocks or commodities.
4. n. Informal A person who is adept at accomplishing goals through shrewd or unscrupulous maneuvers.
5. n. Mathematics A function, especially one from a set to itself, such as differentiation of a differentiable function or rotation of a vector.
6. n. A logical operator.
7. n. Genetics A chromosomal segment of DNA that regulates the activity of the structural genes of an operon by interacting with a specific repressor.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who operates in any way, or on or against anything.
2. n. One who performs a surgical operation.
3. n. One who exercises power, labor, skill, or influence in the accomplishment of some end; one who manipulates something, or is engaged in carrying on a series of acts or transactions by which some intended result is to be reached: as, a telegraph-operator; a Wall-street operator; an operator in wheat.
4. n. In mathematics, a letter or other character signifying an operation to be performed, and itself subject to algebraical operation: as, a vector operator.
5. n. where x, y, z are the rectangular coördinates of the variable point in space where the operand is found, and i, j, k are unit vectors respectively parallel to x, y, z.
6. n. One who conducts a business, as mining; a capitalist who carries on a business: opposed to operative.

Wiktionary

1. n. One who operates.
2. n. A telecommunications facilitator whose job is to establish temporary network connections.
3. n. mathematics A function or other mapping that carries variables defined on a domain into another variable or set of variables in a defined range.
4. n. Another name for Chinese whispers.
5. n. informal A person who is adept at making deals or getting results, especially one who uses questionable methods.
6. n. A member of a military Special Operations unit.
7. n. computing The administrator of a channel or network on IRC.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who, or that which, operates or produces an effect.
2. n. (Surg.) One who performs some act upon the human body by means of the hand, or with instruments.
3. n. Brokers' Cant A dealer in stocks or any commodity for speculative purposes; a speculator.
4. n. (Math.) The symbol that expresses the operation to be performed; -- called also facient.
5. n. A person who operates a telephone switchboard.
6. n. A person who schemes and maneuvers adroitly or deviously to achieve his/her purposes.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an agent that operates some apparatus or machine
2. n. a speculator who trades aggressively on stock or commodity markets
3. n. a shrewd or unscrupulous person who knows how to circumvent difficulties
4. n. (mathematics) a symbol or function representing a mathematical operation
5. n. someone who owns or operates a business