producer
Pluralproducers
- 1A person who organizes, finances, and oversees the making of an artistic work such as an album, film, play, TV program, or video game.
The producer secured funding from three studios before shooting began.
As the album's producer, he shaped the band's sound across every track.
- 2An individual or organization that makes goods or provides services.
The country is a major producer of wheat and other grains.
Producers raise prices when the cost of raw materials goes up.
Similarmanufacturer, maker, grower, supplier
Oppositeconsumer
Note
Economics uses this as the counterpart to consumer, and the word is simply produce + -er. The two roles can belong to the same people. In Edwin Black's Internal Combustion (2006), London's brewers, bakers and pottery producers all became consumers of charcoal. The product is named either in front as a modifier (pottery producers, wheat producers) or after of (a producer of wheat).
- 3An organism that makes complex organic compounds from simple molecules using an external energy source such as sunlight.
Green plants act as producers, turning sunlight into chemical energy.
In this lake, algae are the main producer feeding the whole food web.
Similarautotroph
Oppositeconsumer
Note
Ecology mirrors the vocabulary of the economic sense. Producers sit at the base of most food chains, and everything above them ultimately lives on what they make. The technical equivalent is autotroph. Green plants, algae and cyanobacteria are the familiar cases, building organic compounds from inorganic molecules with energy from sunlight or from chemical reactions.
- 4A speeding arrest after which the driver is given seven days (in the UK) to produce their driving license and related documents at a police station.
He got a producer on the motorway and had a week to bring his documents in.
Two drivers were handed producers during the speed checks that weekend.
Note
British and Irish slang that names the arrest after its consequence: the driver has to produce a license and related documents at a police station. The deadline differs across the Irish Sea, seven days in the UK and ten in Ireland. It is an ordinary countable noun that a driver gets or is handed. Outside those two countries it will puzzle listeners, so explain it for other readers.
Less common meaning
- 5A furnace that produces combustible gas for use as fuel.
The old foundry relied on a producer to supply gas for its burners.
Several producers in the gasworks burned coke to fuel the plant.
Note
An industrial word that now belongs mostly to histories of foundries and gasworks. The furnace converted coal or coke into combustible gas by burning it with a limited supply of air, and the gas went to heating plants and engines. In present-day writing, describe the furnace plainly. A bare producer will otherwise be read as a maker or as a film or album producer.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from the verb "produce" combined with the suffix "-er".