terminator

• Partly from post-classical Latin terminator (5th century), from Latin terminō; partly from terminate +‎ -or.
• (android that kills humans): After the 1984 film The Terminator.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɜː.mɪ.neɪ.tə/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈtɝ.mɪˌneɪ.tɚ/, [ˈtɝ.mɪˌneɪ.ɾɚ]
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈtɜː.mɪ.næɪ.tə/, [ˈtɜː.mɪ.næɪ.ɾə]
• Hyphenation: ter‧mi‧na‧tor
• Rhymes: -eɪtə(ɹ)

terminator (plural terminators)

1. Someone who terminates or ends something, especially (in later use) an assassin or exterminator. [from 17th c.]
2. (computing) A text character or string that serves to mark the end of a document or transmission.
4. (astronomy) The line between the day side and the night side of a moon, planet or other celestial body. [from 17th c.]

   Synonyms: twilight zone, grey line, (general term) separatrix

   • 2015, David Wootton, The Invention of Science, Penguin, published 2016, page 218:

     Harriot, looking at the moon, saw the irregular terminator, the highlights and shadows, the mountain ranges and valleys that Galileo had described – and he also convinced himself that he saw Galileo's imaginary crater.

   • 2026 April 3, Sofia Ferreira Santos, “Artemis II crew take 'spectacular' image of Earth”, in BBC‎^[1]:

     Another view captured by Wiseman shows the Earth divided by night and day. That frontier between light and darkness is known as the terminator.

5. (biochemistry) A DNA sequence that causes RNA transcription to cease and an mRNA transcript to break off. [from 20th c.]
6. (electronics) An electrical device that absorbs reflection at the end of a transmission line.
7. (science fiction) An intelligent android created to destroy humans.
   • 2010, Tyson E. Lewis, Richard Kahn, Education Out of Bounds, page 1:

     Opposite of natural monsters there are technological monsters such as terminators, cyborgs, and robocops—all of which undermine dichotomies between the artificial and the organic, the prosthetic and the natural.

• antitremor

Internationalism, ultimately from post-classical Latin terminātor possibly via English terminator

• (Standard Indonesian) IPA^(key): /termiˈnator/ [t̪er.miˈna.t̪ɔr]
• Rhymes: -ator
• Syllabification: ter‧mi‧na‧tor

términator (plural terminator-terminator)

1. terminator

• “terminator”, in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia [Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language] (in Indonesian), Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [tɛr.mɪˈnaː.tɔr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ter.miˈnaː.tor]

Late Latin, from terminō (“define, limit, end”) +‎ -tor, from terminus (“end, limit”).

terminātor m (genitive terminātōris); third declension

1. he who sets bounds

Third-declension noun.

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

terminātor

1. second/third-person singular future passive imperative of terminō

• “terminator”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• "terminator", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “terminator”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

From termin + -ator.

• IPA^(key): /tɛr.miˈna.tɔr/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -atɔr
• Syllabification: ter‧mi‧na‧tor

terminator m pers (female equivalent terminatorka)

1. (obsolete) apprentice

terminator m inan

1. (astronomy) terminator
2. (electronics) terminator

• “terminator”, in Polish dictionaries at PWN‎^[2] (in Polish)