Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who devotes much time to thought or meditation.
  • noun One who thinks or reasons in a certain way.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who thinks; especially, one who has cultivated or exercised to an unusual extent the powers of thought.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who thinks; especially and chiefly, one who thinks in a particular manner

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who spends time thinking, contemplating or meditating
  • noun An intellectual, such as a philosopher or theologian

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an important intellectual
  • noun someone who exercises the mind (usually in an effort to reach a decision)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

think +‎ -er

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Examples

  • Bertrand Russell said, "The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution".

    Alemayehu G. Mariam: Lessons From Columbia U. Alemayehu G. Mariam 2010

  • Bertrand Russell said, "The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution".

    Alemayehu G. Mariam: Lessons From Columbia U. Alemayehu G. Mariam 2010

  • For a dishonest thinker is under no moral obligation to accept a conclusion to which his logic drives him; even if he loses the argument, a dishonest thinker is not under a duty to change his mind or mend his ways.

    On Sophistry and Subjectivity Hal Duncan 2009

  • The thinker is the thought, the knower is what is known, the possessor is the things possessed.

    Chapter 37 2010

  • And given that we're positing an inquiry, the notion that our thinker is concerned with losing arguments, changing his mind or mending his ways is simply irrelevant to the issue at hand.

    On Sophistry and Subjectivity Hal Duncan 2009

  • And given that we're positing an inquiry, the notion that our thinker is concerned with losing arguments, changing his mind or mending his ways is simply irrelevant to the issue at hand.

    Archive 2009-08-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • From there iterative repetition refines the question until the critical thinker is able to reach a conclusion. chunkdz: Why don't ID'ers publish research in scientific journals?

    Critical Thinking Exercise 2010

  • A sign of a low-quality thinker is the use of "What about X?", where X is any hot topic.

    Why Not Wrestle With a Pig?, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • For a dishonest thinker is under no moral obligation to accept a conclusion to which his logic drives him; even if he loses the argument, a dishonest thinker is not under a duty to change his mind or mend his ways.

    Archive 2009-08-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • You realize how low the bar is as far as human wisdom goes when you can basically just read some great, but hard-to-read, thinker from the past, understand them, and expound their ideas clearly and compellingly in English and become a leading intellectual figure.

    Matthew Yglesias » Time For a Blogger Ethics Panel 2010

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