Reader
name, noun, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 A person who reads.
"an early reader, a talented reader"
- 2 Alternative form of reader (“a lay or minor cleric who reads lessons in a church service”). alt-of, alternative
- 3 one of a series of texts for students learning to read wordnet
- 4 A person who reads a publication.
"10,000 weekly readers"
- 5 a public lecturer at certain universities wordnet
Show 21 more definitions
- 6 A person who recites literary works, usually to an audience.
- 7 someone who reads the lessons in a church service; someone ordained in a minor order of the Roman Catholic Church wordnet
- 8 A proofreader.
- 9 someone who reads proof in order to find errors and mark corrections wordnet
- 10 A person employed by a publisher to read works submitted for publication and determine their merits.
"They were dog-eared by the hands of many a publisher's-reader and postman."
- 11 a person who enjoys reading wordnet
- 12 A position attached to aristocracy, or to the wealthy, with the task of reading aloud, often in a foreign language.
""I am commissioned by the Queen to offer you the place of Italian reader; and I assure you the offer was made with many kind expressions of interest. You will enter upon the duties, which are almost nominal, immediately.""
- 13 a person who can read; a literate person wordnet
- 14 A university lecturer ranking below a professor. British
- 15 someone who reads manuscripts and judges their suitability for publication wordnet
- 16 Any device that reads something.
"a card reader, a microfilm reader"
- 17 someone who contracts to receive and pay for a service or a certain number of issues of a publication wordnet
- 18 A book of exercises to accompany a textbook.
- 19 An elementary textbook for those learning to read, especially for foreign languages.
"Appletons’ School Readers"
- 20 A literary anthology.
"A good bedtime reader should entertain and delight, and that's what I find in Girard Kent's The Boy Harleqin ^([sic]) and Other Stories."
- 21 A lay or minor cleric who reads lessons in a church service.
- 22 A newspaper advertisement designed to look like a news article rather than a commercial solicitation.
- 23 Reading glasses. in-plural
- 24 Marked playing cards used by cheaters. in-plural, slang
"LUMINOUS READERS—Marked cards that can be read only through tinted glasses."
- 25 A wallet or pocketbook. obsolete, slang
"[…] Q was a Queer-screen, that served as a blind; / R was a Reader, with flimsies well lined; […]"
- 26 At Eton College, a lesson for which pupils are sent back to their separate school houses.
- 1 A surname
- 2 A census-designated place in Nevada County and Ouachita County, Arkansas, United States.
- 3 An unincorporated community in Western Mound Township, Macoupin County, Illinois, United States.
- 4 A census-designated place in Wetzel County, West Virginia, United States, named after the Reader Run creek.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"An astute reader should be willing to weigh everything they read, including anonymous sources."
Etymology
From Middle English reder, redar, redere, redare, from Old English rēdere, rǣdere (“a reader; scholar; diviner”), from Proto-West Germanic *rādāri, equivalent to read + -er. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Räider (“advisor”), Dutch rader (“advisor”), German Rater (“advisor”).
Related phrases
More for "reader"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.