Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One that develops.
  • noun A person who develops real estate, especially by preparing a site for residential or commercial use.
  • noun A chemical used to render visible the image recorded on a photosensitive surface.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who or that which develops or unfolds.
  • noun Specifically, in photography, the chemical bath in which a sensitized plate or paper is, after a photographic exposure to the light, immersed to develop or bring out the latent image. Developers for the ordinary dry-plate process may be divided into two principal classes, alkaline developers and ferrous-oxalate developers, the first generally employing carbonate of soda or potash in combination with pyrogallic acid, and the second using oxalate of potash with protosulphate of iron. The results obtained are practically the same with either bath, the latent image in the film being made visible, and the chemical changes induced being fixed, or made permanent in the fixing bath, which follows the developing bath. Many other chemicals may be used in development, either in combination with some of those mentioned above or in independent combinations. See photography.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who, or that which, develops.
  • noun (Photog.) A chemical bath or reagent used in developing photographs.
  • noun (Dyeing) A reagent used to produce an ingrain color by its action upon some substance on the fiber.
  • noun a corporation or individual who finances or organizes a real estate development{5}.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person or entity engaged in the creation or improvement of certain classes of products.
  • noun A real estate developer; a person or company who prepares a parcel of land for sale, or creates structures on that land.
  • noun A film developer; a person who uses chemicals to create photographs from photograph negatives.
  • noun A liquid used in the chemical processing of traditional photos.
  • noun A software developer; a person or company who creates or modifies computer software.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun photographic equipment consisting of a chemical solution for developing film
  • noun someone who develops real estate (especially someone who prepares a site for residential or commercial use)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

to develop + -er

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Examples

  • Searches with the term developer and every imaginable iteration of it are much more likely to return results on MSDN than searches with the term program or code.

    Site Home gclass 2011

  • For too long, the term developer has been overloaded in the Web agency world.

    JeffCroft.com: Latest blog entries 2009

  • But if the developer is also up to no good then yeah, it just makes the whole point moot.

    How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has A Virus? | Lifehacker Australia 2010

  • The way that I read the article (and know from talking -- the developer is the dad of one of my kid's classmates at school), is that the rainwater reclaimation is only going to be used for landscape and exterior watering -- no toliet flushing, or anything internal, which will come off the mains.

    ccfinlay: A few blocks away from where I work, a d ccfinlay 2007

  • Leasing valuable land to a developer is a commonplace business transaction for commercial development.

    Sound Politics: When Elected Officials Make Fools of Themselves 2006

  • If the developer is also building homes in the development, he may be thinking that if he sells you an extra lot, you may use it as yard, and he would then not make a profit by building a house on the second lot.

    buying lot for house 2005

  • If the developer is also building homes in the development, he may be thinking that if he sells you an extra lot, you may use it as yard, and he would then not make a profit by building a house on the second lot.

    buying lot for house 2005

  • If the developer is also building homes in the development, he may be thinking that if he sells you an extra lot, you may use it as yard, and he would then not make a profit by building a house on the second lot.

    buying lot for house 2005

  • If the developer is also building homes in the development, he may be thinking that if he sells you an extra lot, you may use it as yard, and he would then not make a profit by building a house on the second lot.

    buying lot for house 2005

  • If the developer is also building homes in the development, he may be thinking that if he sells you an extra lot, you may use it as yard, and he would then not make a profit by building a house on the second lot.

    buying lot for house 2005

Comments

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  • Someone who develops Websites on the World Wide Web.

    April 27, 2009

  • That is a very strange interpretation of this definition. Typically in computers, developer refers to someone who develops computer software, which could include web sites, but is almost always referred to as a "web developer". When Steve Ballmer shouted "Developers Developers Developers", he wasn't referred to web designers.

    April 28, 2009