The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
n. One that synthesizes: a synthesizer of others' ideas.
n. Music An electronic instrument, often played with a keyboard, that combines simple waveforms to produce more complex sounds, such as those of various other instruments.
n. An electronic instrument that creates its sounds with electronics and has a keyboard.
n. An electronic instrument module that creates its sounds with electronics and does not have any keyboard.
n. An electronic circuit that generates an electronic signal oscillation with accurate timing from a reference oscillator.
n. An electronic device that generates electronic signal patterns to test an electronic circuit.
The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
n. In acoustics, an instrument for the production of complex tones of predetermined composition.
WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
n. (music) an electronic instrument (usually played with a keyboard) that generates and modifies sounds electronically and can imitate a variety of other musical instruments
n. an intellectual who synthesizes or uses synthetic methods
Word Usage
"It feels like a post including the Rutt-Etra synthesizer is incomplete without a mention of another amazing, early realtime video processor, the Daniel Sandin Image processor."