converter

noun con·vert·er \ kən-ˈvər-tər \

|Updated on: 21 Aug 2018

Definition of converter

: one that converts: such as

a : the furnace used in the Bessemer process

b or convertor play \kən-ˈvər-tər\ : a device employing mechanical rotation for changing electrical energy from one form to another (as from direct current to alternating current or vice versa); also : a radio device for converting one frequency to another

c : a device for adapting a television or radio receiver to receive channels or frequencies for which it was not originally designed

a cable converter

FM converter

d : a device that accepts data in one form and converts it to another

analog-digital converter

e : catalytic converter

See converter defined for English-language learners

Recent Examples of converter from the Web

Photographer: Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg A worker checks and cleans steel slabs in a storage area at the converter shop at the Novolipetsk Steel PJSC plant in Lipetsk, Russia.

— Bloomberg.com, "Bloomberg’s Week in Pictures," 21 June 2018
My purse is always ready with my Sony RX100 camera; my charger for its terrible battery; two of my three portable batteries; two wall-charging blocks; a converter plug; and both a micro-USB and an iPhone cord.

— jada yuan, New York Times, "How Do You Pack for a Yearlong Trip?," 27 June 2018
Vanessa Coleman started a business called FINsix—which built an efficient and compact power converter—at MIT’s Sloan business school with three other graduate students.

— The Economist, "Can you teach entrepreneurship?," 7 June 2018
An unsuccessful attempt was made to steal socks, tank top T-shirts, underwear and an RCA converter box at a store.

— Washington Post, "Southern Maryland crime report," 16 May 2018
Transmission fluid is being flung around inside the converter, but not very forcefully.

— bob weber, chicagotribune.com, "Shifting from manual to automatic transmission can be a grind," 21 Jan. 2018
Prices are listed in U.S. dollars or U.K. pounds (use an online currency converter to estimate what the item will cost you in dollars); taxes and delivery charges are extra.

— david rising, chicagotribune.com, "From chicken to condoms, marketers cash in on royal wedding," 18 May 2018
The researchers suggest that all of the expensive detector and signal processing equipment can be replaced with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and an analog-to-digital converter.

— chris lee, Ars Technica, "Lidar system images bullet in flight," 30 Mar. 2018
Three years and one Apple boot camp later, his free measurement-converter app, Quickvert, has been downloaded more than 1,000 times on the App Store.

— Bloomberg.com, "Apple Teaches India’s Kid Coders to Win at the App Store," 24 Apr. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'converter.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.