donor
Pluraldonors
- 1A person who gives money, goods, or other support to a cause, an organization, or a person in need.
The charity thanked every donor by name at its annual dinner.
A generous donor funded scholarships for first-generation students.
Similarbenefactor, contributor, giver, patron, sponsor
Oppositerecipient, beneficiary
Note
The word came into English through the French of medieval England: Middle English donour, from Anglo-Norman donour and Old French doneur, a cousin of modern French donneur. It stretches past money and goods. An organ donor gives part of the body. In Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Lady Anne Granard (1838), Isabella hesitates to trespass on "the donor's generosity", the giver's feelings weighed alongside the gift.
- 2A machine or object, often broken beyond repair, kept so that its usable parts can replace the failed parts of another.
Restorers bought a rusted-out sedan to serve as a donor for its rare trim pieces.
The workshop's shelf of donors finally yielded the exact valve they needed.
Note
This is the transplant image carried into the workshop. Like an organ donor, a broken machine gives up its working parts so another can run. Aaron Bonk's Honda Engine Swaps (2004) treats it as plain shop talk: swap one connector "for that of the donor." The word marks which side gives in a parts transfer. The machine being repaired is the one that receives.
- 3A molecule or group that supplies a radical, electrons, or a moiety to another species in a chemical reaction, as distinguished from the acceptor.
The amine acts as the electron donor in the coupling step.
Hydrogen donors stabilize the radical before it can react further.
Oppositeacceptor
Note
Chemists use it in pairs: every donor implies an acceptor on the other side of the exchange. In use, the thing given usually comes first as a modifier, as in electron donor, hydrogen donor, or a carbonyl donor molecule. That phrasing names the cargo rather than the giver. Read it as "supplier of X". The same species may count as a donor of one thing in one reaction and not in another.
Practice
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Origin
The word comes from Middle English donoure or donour, taken from Anglo-Norman donour, which itself came from Old French doneur.