identifier

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

identify +‎ -er

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (file)

Noun[edit]

identifier (plural identifiers)

  1. Someone who identifies; a person who establishes the identity of someone or something.
    • 2001, Theodore A. Landers, The Career Guide to the Horse Industry[1]:
      The Identifier personally inspects each horse in each race by verifying the lip tattoo, body color, head and leg markings, scars, and chestnut (night eyes).
    • 2004, John McEvoy, Great Horse Racing Mysteries: True Tales from the Track[2]:
      The foal papers are documents recording the horse's registration; no horse can start in any race unless his papers are in the hands of the track's identifier.
    • 2007, Paolo Tombesi, Osamu Hirota, Quantum Communication, Computing, and Measurement 3, page 291:
      Here, we would use the anonymous key technique to obtain a quantum identification protocol AKI of the challenge-response type in which the identifier cannot pretend to be the identifiee []
  2. Something that identifies or uniquely points to something or someone else.
    • 2008, Ted Dunstone, Neil Yager, Biometric System and Data Analysis:
      Prehistoric artists used hand-prints in cave paintings, perhaps as a 'signature'. They might be considered the earliest example of a biometric identifier.
  3. One who identifies as a particular type or role; one who says and believes that they are a certain thing.
    • 2019, Raina Simone Henderson, The Cost of Identity, page 80:
      While the DOJ and BOJS already calculate data by gender, trans identifiers are not included, it is solely by men and women
  4. A guidebook that helps determine the specific class of an object (such as a mushroom, herb, fish, bird, drug, or mineral), or its individual identity (such as that of a star).
  5. (programming, operating systems) A formal name used in source code to refer to a variable, function, procedure, package, etc. or in an operating system to refer to a process, user, group, etc.
  6. (HTML) A code that distinguishes a particular element from all other elements in a document.
  7. (databases) A primary key.

Antonyms[edit]

Coordinate terms[edit]

  • authenticator (an identifier asserts identity; an authenticator verifies it)

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

See also[edit]

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from Medieval Latin identificāre.

Pronunciation[edit]

Verb[edit]

identifier

  1. to identify
  2. to log in

Conjugation[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Related terms[edit]

Further reading[edit]