collider

noun

col·​lid·​er kə-ˈlī-dər How to pronounce collider (audio)
: a particle accelerator in which two beams of particles moving in opposite directions are made to collide

Examples of collider in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web We, with our spaceships and particle colliders, our operas and crème brûlées, our megacities and globe-spanning systems of cooperation, are made of the same essential stuff as those club-wielding nomads cooking mastodon steaks on a spit. Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 12 Feb. 2024 Gas carried by incoming colliders also set off more star formation in the Milky Way. Ann Finkbeiner, Scientific American, 16 Jan. 2024 Particle colliders like the CERN machine get their oomph from Einstein’s revelation that energy and mass are interchangeable. Katrina Miller, New York Times, 7 Dec. 2023 With trillion electron-volt electrons, high-energy colliders become possible, Hommelhoff says. IEEE Spectrum, 24 Oct. 2023 Libraries are like a kind of social collider: a space intended for people to freely cross paths with ideas and others unlike themselves. Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic, 15 Sep. 2023 Encoded in that microwave fuzz are vestiges of events that occurred when the cosmos was less than one-trillionth of a second old and brimming with energies far beyond the capacity of modern particle colliders. Dennis Overbye Hiroko Masuike, New York Times, 4 Sep. 2023 That linear collider, first built in the 1960s, was once SLAC’s reason for existing. IEEE Spectrum, 26 Sep. 2023 In Into the Spider-Verse when the dimension collider begins to short-circuit and blast New York City, flattening elements of a variety of dimensions into each other, the results look like crazy art installations thrown into the streets. Dan Gvozden, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 June 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'collider.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1979, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of collider was in 1979

Dictionary Entries Near collider

Cite this Entry

“Collider.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collider. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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