initiatorn.

1676 E. Coles Eng. Dict. Initiator, which doth initiate.

1738 W. Warburton Divine Legation Moses I. 68 The interpreters of these holy Mysteries, the Hierophants and Initiators.

1822 T. Taylor tr. Apuleius Metamorphosis 276 Initiators into the mysteries.

1847 G. H. Lewes Hist. Philos. (1853) 125 Regarded as the initiator of a new epoch.

1943 K. L. Pike Phonetics vii. 120 At the time in the production of some sound when any moveable part of the vocal apparatus causes any stricture..it becomes an articulator unless it is a closure performing the function of an initiator.

1971 I. F. Hancock in J. Spencer Eng. Lang. W. Afr. 117 The process of creolising in the direction of a language other than the initiator language of the pidgin form has been rather misleadingly called relexification.

1915 A. Marshall Explosives xxix. 417 Of all these explosives silver azide, mercury fulminate, and the aldehyde are the only ones that have a sufficiently high acceleration to be of any use as initiators of detonation.

1944 Compt. Rend. (Doklady) de l'Acad. des Sci. de l'URSS XLIV. 18 One might naturally expect that the flash-point..would be lower for the initiators than for secondary explosives.

1962 Ordnance Techn. Terminol. (U.S. Army Ordnance School) 164/1 Initiator, a device used as the first element of an explosive train, such as a detonator or squib... It generally contains a small quantity of a sensitive explosive.

1964 M. Gowing Brit. & Atomic Energy 1939–45 ix. 264 His criticism enlivened discussions on bomb assembly, and he participated very actively in the design of the initiator.

1940 in Chambers's Techn. Dict.

1951 E. M. Frith & R. F. Tuckett Linear Polymers ii. 50 In any large-scale production of a polymer, catalytic initiation is nearly always used... The word ‘catalyst’ in this connection is rather a misnomer, as it is almost always destroyed in starting off polymerisation; ‘initiator’ is less open to objection, but has never really established itself.

1959 D. J. Cram & G. S. Hammond Org. Chem. xxv. 573 There are three principal classes of free-radical initiators: 1. Compounds..which undergo thermal decomposition... 2. Photosensitizers... 3. Redox systems.

1972 Billingham & Jenkins in A. D. Jenkins Polymer Sci. i. i. 19 Azo-bis-isobutyronitrile is very frequently used as an initiator for research studies on radical polymerization.