accelerator

US/əkˈsɛl.əˌɹeɪ.tɚ/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,216 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: accelerators

The accelerator is the pedal that makes a vehicle go faster. The right-hand one, under your right foot.

British English says accelerator and American English usually says the gas pedal, which is the same thing. The other two pedals are the brake and, in a manual car, the clutch. Physics uses the word for something enormous instead, since a particle accelerator drives particles to nearly the speed of light. Business borrowed it too, and a start-up accelerator is a programme designed to make young companies grow fast.

Definitions of accelerator

1nounacceleratorThe pedal that increases a vehicle's speed.B1+
“She put her foot down on the accelerator.”

Where it comes from

Latin
accelerātus
English
accelerate
English, today
accelerator

Built from

accelerō · Latin — to accelerate, hasten
celerō · Latin — to hasten
celer · Latin — quick

From accelerate + -or. accelerate Learned borrowing from Latin accelerātus. First attested in the 1520s. Either from Latin accelerātus, perfect passive participle of accelerō (“to accelerate, hasten”) (see -ate and -ate), formed from ad + celerō (“to hasten”), which is from celer (“quick”) (see celerity), or a back-formation from acceleration.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Word Building

First appears in chapter 27 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

accelerator in the wild

In these accelerators, particles would cross an accelerating electric field only once.
Cyclotron
The accelerator complex that feeds the Main Injector is under upgrade, and construction of the first building for the new PIP-II linear accelerator began in 2020.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Until 2011, Fermilab was the home of the 6.28 km circumference Tevatron accelerator.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Accelerator physics is a branch of applied physics, concerned with designing, building and operating particle accelerators.
Accelerator physics
In essence, the accelerator effect proposes that investment levels are contingent on the pace of change in GDP rather than its absolute level.
Accelerator effect

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the celer family

cellar ceiling

accelerator — used about once every 2,471 pages · #7,216 · point at the bar for the others

acceleration

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