compositor

From French compositeur, from Latin compositor.

• IPA^(key): /kəmˈpɒzɪtə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

compositor (plural compositors)

1. A person who sets type; a typesetter.
   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:

     Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […] his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.

   • 1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter IV, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC:

     All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was 'O.K., baby', the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it.

   • 1983, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, Second edition, 2005, p. 56:

     However late medieval copyists were supervised — and controls were much more lax than many accounts suggest — scribes were incapable of committing the sort of "standardized" error that was produced by a compositor who dropped the word "not" from the Seventh Commandment and thus created the "wicked" Bible of 1631.

2. One who, or that which, composes or sets in order.

   I work as an image compositor.

3. (computer graphics) A system that puts images together in a buffer (such as individual windows on a desktop) to generate a final display image.

Borrowed from Latin compositōrem.

• IPA^(key): (Northern) [kum.pu.ziˈtu]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic, Northwestern) [kom.po.ziˈto]
• IPA^(key): (Central) [kum.pu.ziˈto]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [kom.po.ziˈtoɾ]

• Audio (Barcelona):

  (file)

compositor m (plural compositors, feminine compositora, feminine plural compositores)

1. composer

• compondre

• “compositor”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “compositor”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2026
• “compositor” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “compositor”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)

From Latin compositor.

compositor m (plural compositores, feminine compositora, feminine plural compositoras)

1. composer (one who composes music)

• compor, compoñer

• “compositor”, in Dicionario da Real Academia Galega (in Galician), A Coruña: Royal Galician Academy, 2012–2026

compositus, perfect passive participle of compōnō (“to arrange”) +‎ -tor

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [kɔmˈpɔ.sɪ.tɔr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [komˈpɔː.s̬i.tor]

compositor m (genitive compositōris); third declension

1. a maker, arranger, composer

Third-declension noun.

• compositiō

• → Catalan: compositor
• → French: compositeur
• → Galician: compositor
• → Italian: compositore
• → Portuguese: compositor
• → Romanian: compozitor
• → Russian: компози́тор (kompozítor)
• → Spanish: compositor

• “compositor”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “compositor”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers

Borrowed from Latin compositōrem.

• Rhymes: (Portugal, São Paulo) -oɾ, (Brazil) -oʁ
• Hyphenation: com‧po‧si‧tor

compositor m (plural compositores, feminine compositora, feminine plural compositoras)

1. composer (one who composes; an author)
2. composer (one who composes music)
3. (music) songwriter

• compor

• “compositor”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “compositor”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Borrowed from Latin compositor.

• IPA^(key): /komposiˈtoɾ/ [kõm.po.siˈt̪oɾ]

• Audio (Spain):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -oɾ
• Syllabification: com‧po‧si‧tor

compositor m (plural compositores, feminine compositora, feminine plural compositoras)

1. composer

• “compositor”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025