Etymologically
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detector

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /dɪˈtɛktə(ɹ)/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin dētēctor (“revealer, uncoverer”),[2][3][4][5] an agent noun from dētegō (“to uncover, expose, reveal”),[2][3][4] from dē- (“un-, off”) and tegō (“to cover”),[6][3] from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teg- (“to cover”).[6][3] The OED notes that the Latin noun is found in Tertullian.[2] The Shorter Oxford takes it instead as formed in English from detect and -or.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person or thing that discloses or reveals something; an informer or accuser: 1541, in Paynell's translation of the Conspiracy of Catiline.[2][3] This sense was obsolete by the mid 18th century.[2][7]

Semantic evolution

From 1608, in Shakespeare's King Lear, a detector was a person who finds out what is hidden or tends to escape notice.[2][7] The word moved to devices in the 19th century, following the senses of detect: first, in 1833, an arrangement in a lock that showed and frustrated any attempt to tamper with it,[2][3] then a portable galvanometer for testing electric current (1860), any device that detects something (1894) and, in early wireless telegraphy, a rectifier for high-frequency signals (1895).[2] In the United States a bank-note detector was a published list of current notes with their real value (1893).[2]

Timeline

  • 1541 – a revealer, informer or accuser (obsolete by 1742).[2]
  • 1608 – one who finds out what is concealed.[2]
  • 1833 – a device in a lock showing any attempt at tampering.[2][3]
  • 1860 – a portable galvanometer for testing current.[2]
  • 1894 – any device or circuit for detecting something.[2]
  • 1895 – a rectifier used in wireless telegraphy.[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A device that senses the presence of something, such as smoke, metal or radiation, and gives a signal: The detector beeped as soon as he lit the candle.
  2. (electronics) A device or circuit that extracts the information from a radio signal; a demodulator.
  3. A person or thing that detects something.

Word family

  • microdetector
  • photodetector
  • lie detector
  • smoke detector
  • metal detector

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  5. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press