reader
NOUN · English
Experimental / limited support
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The corpus records 17 senses of reader. Each sense below has its own Add to list, so you choose the one you mean.
Display information
Experimental coverage — measured below Partial on the number of recorded words, definitions, translations, word forms and pronunciation. Treat entries as evidence to check; meanings may be incomplete.
English is Experimental in Words. Support is measured, not declared: a language reaches Partial only when every measure meets its threshold, and a measure that has not been taken does not count. The development corpus holds 60 source-backed words in English. What is shown may be incomplete, and pronunciation audio, generated forms and generated examples are not offered.
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Definition: A person who reads. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- an early reader, a talented reader Usage example — not an attested quotation.
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Definition: A person who reads a publication. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- 10,000 weekly readers Usage example — not an attested quotation.
- In its May 1965 issue, Life magazine condemned skateboards as a “menace to limb and even to life,” and cautioned readers about riders who “take over the paths made for peaceful strollers.” 2018 July 13, Jaime Marie Davis, “How photographers have captured skateboarding through generations”, in CNN, archived from the original on 18 Mar 2025:
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Definition: A person who recites literary works, usually to an audience. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: A proofreader. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: A person employed by a publisher to read works submitted for publication and determine their merits. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- They were dog-eared by the hands of many a publisher's-reader and postman. 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VIII, in Capricornia, page 123:
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Definition: A position attached to aristocracy, or to the wealthy, with the task of reading aloud, often in a foreign language. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- "I am commissioned by the Queen to offer you the place of Italian reader; and I assure you the offer was made with many kind expressions of interest. You will enter upon the duties, which are almost nominal, immediately." 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 83–84:
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Definition: A university lecturer ranking below a professor. From a source of medium confidence.
UK
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: Any device that reads something. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- a card reader, a microfilm reader Usage example — not an attested quotation.
- The reMarkable PDF reader is really targeted at the digital writing market, rather than the digital reading market, though most serious e-readers support pens for annotations and signatures. 2019 June 27, Jack Schofield, “What’s the best cheap tablet or e-reader for PDF files?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 27 Apr 2023:
- A quick search on Kaiser's website, there was nothing that talked about plate readers or a usage policy. 2023 December 1, Da Lin, “Privacy advocates accuse Kaiser of not following state law on license plate readers”, in CBS News, archived from the original on 22 Feb 2024:
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Definition: A book of exercises to accompany a textbook. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: An elementary textbook for those learning to read, in a native language or a foreign language. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- Appletons’ School Readers Usage example — not an attested quotation.
- [Editor David W. Blight said:] In 1795, after producing his own geography textbook, modeled on Jedidiah Morse’s famous Geography (1784), Bingham resigned as a teacher in the Boston schools, opened a bookstore on Cornhill Street in Boston, and devoted himself to producing schoolbooks. In Boston in 1797, he published the first of approximately 23 editions of The Columbian Orator. By the first two decades of the nineteenth century, in vast stretches of rural America, including the South, Bingham’s readers joined the Bible and an occasional almanac as the only books in many homesteads. […] Finally, Bingham saw the early American republic as a new political beginning for humankind, and his more than one million schoolbooks sold across the land were designed to produce republican citizens. The Columbian Orator was an elocution manual as well as a reader for school children in the new republic. 1997 [1797], David W. Blight, “Editor's Introduction: The Peculiar Dialogue Between Caleb Bingham and Frederick Douglass”, in Caleb Bingham, edited by David W. Blight, The Columbian Orator, Bicentennial Edition (1997 republishing), New York University Press, →ISBN:
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Definition: A literary anthology. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- A good bedtime reader should entertain and delight, and that's what I find in Girard Kent's The Boy Harleqin ^([sic]) and Other Stories. 1981 December 1, Thomas Hopkinson, “Streetboy Dreams; The Boy Harlequin and Other Stories (review)”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 20, page 10:
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Definition: A lay or minor cleric who reads lessons in a church service. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: A newspaper advertisement designed to look like a news article rather than a commercial solicitation. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: Reading glasses. From a source of medium confidence.
in-plural
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
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Definition: Marked playing cards used by cheaters. From a source of medium confidence.
in-plural · slang
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- LUMINOUS READERS—Marked cards that can be read only through tinted glasses. 1961, United States. Congress. Senate. Government Operations, Gambling and Organized Crime, Parts 1, 2, 3. 87-1, page 286:
- Of the 150,000,000 decks of cards sold each year in America, Scarne estimates that 1 percent get marked at some point. Yet, as he discovered in his 1972 gambling survey, only 2 percent of average players have any idea of how to detect these "readers." 1991, John Bowyer Bell, Barton Whaley, Cheating and Deception, page 185:
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Definition: A wallet or pocketbook. From a source of medium confidence.
obsolete · slang
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- […] Q was a Queer-screen, that served as a blind; / R was a Reader, with flimsies well lined; […] 1846, George William MacArthur Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, page 60:
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Definition: At Eton College, a lesson for which pupils are sent back to their separate school houses. From a source of medium confidence.
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
No example is recorded for this sense.
No paradigm has been compiled for this word yet.
Etymology: From Middle English reder, redar, redere, redare, from Old English rēdere, rǣdere (“a reader; scholar; diviner”), from Proto-West Germanic *rādāri, equivalent to read + -er. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Räider (“advisor”), Dutch rader (“advisor”), German Rater (“advisor”). From a source of medium confidence.
No related word is recorded for this word.