differentiatorn.

1854 E. M. Whitty Derbyites & Coalition 100 Gladstone, the greatest differentiator of his age—a man who not only spread the one hide of Oxford over the whole of Rome—but, first of all, split all the hairs!

1885 Standard 28 May 5/2 He was a Naturalist of the widest sympathies—not a mere differentiator of processes.

1934 Salt Lake Tribune 23 Jan. 4/2 Jim Tully is reputed the most precise differentiator between the phoneys and the real things in Hollywood.

1878 ‘J. H. Alexander’ Lights on Way 79 Dress and manners, which are the dress of sentiment, are the great differentiators.

1933 R. P. Coman Organization of Parent Educ. in Calif. (M.A. thesis, Univ. S. Calif.) 9 Her conclusions, based upon the findings, show that..motherhood is a biological fact, and mothering is woman's unique differentiator.

1966 G. DeVos & H. Wagatsuma Japan's Invisible Race (1967) p. xix Race as a concept..has lost its scientific value as a differentiator of mental or moral patterns.

2011 R. Basso Everyday Entrepreneur vii. 109 Customer service can be the real differentiator between you and your biggest competitor.

1921 L. Berman Glands regulating Personality ii. 59 Besides the action of the thyroid as energizer, lubricator, and growth catalyzer, it has a remarkable power as a differentiator of tissues.

1924 Discovery June 77/1 Some influence..made the tissues of the host build themselves up in the special and orderly way of differentiation. It was a differentiator.

1988 L. H. Seenath Industr. Biotechnol. Internat. 1988/89 i. 23 There will be some tumour cells that remain unresponsive to differentiators and these should be attacked by toxins.

2013 M. L. Tykocinski in S. R. Schmidt Fusion Protein Technol. Biopharmaceut. xxx. 467/1 The constellation of signals amenable to conversion goes well beyond those that serve as activators, proliferators, differentiators, inhibitors, or inducers of cell death.

1939 Proc. Royal Soc. A. 171 176 An electric differentiator circuit..was used to delineate the ground ray and echo pulses.

1958 Symp. Nondestructive Tests Nucl. Energy (Amer. Inst. Chem. Engineers) 363/1 It consists of a clipper and differentiator to shape the synchronizing pulses,..an input pulse amplifier, the diode gate tubes, and the output cathode follower stages.

1958 Adv. in Chem. Engin. II. 42 They [sc. Typical process control systems] may also be regarded as combinations of time lags, time delays, amplifiers, summers, differentiators, integrators, and other simple functional units.

1969 P. B. Jordain Condensed Computer Encycl. 156 An ordinary transformer produces an output voltage proportional to the rate of change of the input current, but its use as a differentiator is not common.

2011 M. E. Brumbach Industr. Electr. (ed. 8) xxi. 540/2 During this time the output of the differentiator is negative.