Library / English Dictionary

DIRECTOR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

The person who leads a musical group

Synonyms:

conductor; director; music director

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("director" is a kind of...):

musician (artist who composes or conducts music as a profession)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "director"):

bandleader (the leader of a dance band)

bandmaster (the conductor of a band)

drum major (the leader of a marching band or drum corps)

drum majorette; majorette (a female drum major)

Instance hyponyms:

Sir Henry Joseph Wood; Sir Henry Wood; Wood (English conductor (1869-1944))

Baron Karl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber; Carl Maria von Weber; Weber (German conductor and composer of romantic operas (1786-1826))

Bruno Walter; Walter (German conductor (1876-1962))

Arturo Toscanini; Toscanini (Italian conductor of many orchestras worldwide (1867-1957))

George Szell; Szell (United States conductor (born in Hungary) (1897-1970))

Leopold Antoni Stanislaw Stokowski; Leopold Stokowski; Stokowski (United States conductor (born in Britain) (1882-1977))

Ozawa; Seiji Ozawa (United States conductor (born in Japan in 1935))

Eugene Ormandy; Ormandy (United States conductor (born in Hungary) (1899-1985))

Gustav Mahler; Mahler (Austrian composer and conductor (1860-1911))

Constant Lambert; Lambert; Leonard Constant Lambert (English composer and conductor (1905-1951))

Koussevitzky; Serge Koussevitzky; Sergei Aleksandrovich Koussevitzky (United States conductor (born in Russia) who was noted for performing the works of contemporary composers (1874-1951))

Hindemith; Paul Hindemith (German neoclassical composer and conductor who believed that music should have a social purpose (1895-1963))

Arthur Fiedler; Fiedler (popular United States conductor (1894-1979))

Benjamin Britten; Britten; Edward Benjamin Britten; Lord Britten of Aldeburgh (major English composer of the 20th century; noted for his operas (1913-1976))

Bernstein; Leonard Bernstein (United States conductor and composer (1918-1990))

Derivation:

direct (lead, as in the performance of a composition)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Someone who controls resources and expenditures

Synonyms:

director; manager; managing director

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("director" is a kind of...):

administrator; decision maker (someone who administers a business)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "director"):

manageress (a woman manager)

district manager (a manager who supervises the sales activity for a district)

bank manager (manager of a branch office of a bank)

Derivation:

direct (be in charge of)

directorship (the position of a director of a business concern)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Someone who supervises the actors and directs the action in the production of a show

Synonyms:

director; theater director; theatre director

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("director" is a kind of...):

supervisor (one who supervises or has charge and direction of)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "director"):

stage director (someone who supervises the actors and directs the action in the production of a stage show)

Instance hyponyms:

Granville-Barker; Harley Granville-Barker (English actor and dramatist and critic and director noted for his productions of Shakespearean plays (1877-1946))

Elia Kazan; Elia Kazanjoglous; Kazan (United States stage and screen director (born in Turkey) and believer in method acting (1909-2003))

Konstantin Sergeevich Alekseev; Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky; Konstantin Stanislavsky; Stanislavsky (Russian actor and theater director who trained his actors to emphasize the psychological motivation of their roles (1863-1938))

Derivation:

direct (guide the actors in (plays and films))

Sense 4

Meaning:

Member of a board of directors

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("director" is a kind of...):

committee member (a member of a committee)

Holonyms ("director" is a member of...):

board (a committee having supervisory powers)

Derivation:

directorship (the position of a director of a business concern)

Sense 5

Meaning:

The person who directs the making of a film

Synonyms:

director; film director

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("director" is a kind of...):

film maker; film producer; filmmaker; movie maker (a producer of motion pictures)

Instance hyponyms:

Bergman; Ingmar Bergman (Swedish film director who used heavy symbolism and explored the psychology of the characters (born 1918))

Bunuel; Luis Bunuel (Spanish film director (1900-1983))

Alfred Hitchcock; Alfred Joseph Hitchcock; Hitchcock; Sir Alfred Hitchcock (English film director noted for his skill in creating suspense (1899-1980))

Israel Strassberg; Lee Strasberg; Strasberg (United States actor and film director (born in Austria) who was a leader in developing method acting in the United States (1901-1982))

Credits

 Context examples: 

This fellow Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the matter.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"This research provides fundamental insights into a substance as familiar as water," says Anne-Marie Schmoltner, a program director in NSF's Division of Chemistry.

(Scientists probe the limits of ice, National Science Foundation)

The evolution of surface and shallow subsurface meltwater across Antarctic ice shelves has important implications for their stability, said program director Paul Cutler in NSF's Office of Polar Programs.

(Reframing the dangers Antarctica's meltwater ponds pose to ice shelves and sea level, National Science Foundation)

The novelty of this research is its global-scale prediction of where disturbance-sensitive species are likely to be found, said Betsy von Holle, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology.

(Forest fragmentation hits wildlife hardest in the tropics, National Science Foundation)

The date on which the final report is signed by the study director.

(Nonclinical Study End Date, Food and Drug Administration/CDISC)

This previously unknown effect of nitrate, a common pollutant, shows how complex ecosystem interactions could result in reducing the carbon-holding ability of salt marshes said Michael Sieracki, program director for Biological Oceanography.

(Salt marshes' capacity to store carbon may be threatened by nitrogen pollution, National Science Foundation)

"This new view of dissolved phosphorus will be critical to understanding how life is responding to a changing ocean," said Mike Sieracki, a program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

(Study reveals new patterns of key ocean nutrient, National Science Foundation)

And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of religieuses would worship their director.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Despite tremendous interest in microplastics, we are just beginning to understand the scale and effects of these ocean contaminants, said Dan Thornhill, a program director in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

(Microplastics million times more abundant in the ocean than previously thought, National Science Foundation)

NHGRI scientific director Daniel Kastner, M.D., Ph.D. and his team sequenced gene regions across the genome and discovered only one gene — RIPK1 — to be consistently different in all patients.

(Researchers discover new autoinflammatory disease and uncover its biological cause, National Institutes of Health)