Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An inventor; one who plans or devises; a schemer.

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

  • noun One who contrives, devises, plans, or schemas.

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

  • noun A person who contrives; a schemer or planner

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

  • noun a person who makes plans

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

contrive +‎ -er

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Examples

  • But Linder, with her single and singular name and her unsettled sense of what "Linderland" a later imagined rubric in which to corral her disparate activities might contain, has been many artists: photomonteur indebted to Modernism, musical conduit from 1970s feminism to art-inflected post-punk, collaborator and adviser, too often dismissed as "muse", for others such as Morrissey and Magazine vocalist Howard Devoto, latterly contriver and often star of shamanic and gruelling gallery performances.

    Linder, the artist with the hex factor 2011

  • Besides being a fascinating interpreter of classical philosophical texts, as well as a surprising contriver of strings of verbal associations, Heidegger was an indispensable guide to the present.

    Archive 2009-01-01 enowning 2009

  • Besides being a fascinating interpreter of classical philosophical texts, as well as a surprising contriver of strings of verbal associations, Heidegger was an indispensable guide to the present.

    enowning enowning 2009

  • In this place, the ingenuity of the contriver and disposer of the walks had exerted itself to make the most of little space, and by screens, both of stone ornamented with rude sculpture, and hedges of living green, had endeavoured to give as much intricacy and variety as the confined limits of the garden would admit.

    The Abbot 2008

  • January 6th, 2006 at 8: 40 pm click says: contriver: anatomically devise tributes: fertilized Lowell. speedups

    Think Progress » EU wants answers on secret prisons. 2005

  • What an admirable contriver did I think myself till now!

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • An excellent contriver, surely, she must think this worthy Mr. Tomlinson to be!

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • Apprehensive for both our safeties from the villany of such a daring and profligate contriver, I must call upon you, my dear, to resolve upon taking legal vengeance of the infernal wretch.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • Indeed the world, let me escape whither, and to whomsoever I could, would conclude him to be the contriver of it.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • So, my dear, it comes out, that I myself was obliged to this deep contriver.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

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