calculator

noun

1. A mechanical or electronic device that performs mathematical calculations; (now usually) an electronic one specifically.

   “electronic calculator;   pocket calculator”

   “The calculator on a bookkeeper's desk in the 1950s was an adding machine with mechanical guts.”

   “I told him to hand me a calculator and he jokingly placed an adding machine at my side.”

2. (historical)A person who performs mathematical calculation.

   “During the war, his grandmother had worked at the Bletchley Park decoding station as a calculator.”

   “First, many real-world investors bear little resemblance to the cool calculators of efficient-market theory: they're all too subject to herd behavior, to bouts of irrational exuberance and unwarranted panic.”

3. A person who calculates (in the sense of scheming).

   “Near-synonyms: schemer, plotter; manipulator”

   “He revealed himself to be a cold-blooded calculator out to sabotage his colleagues.”

   “Talk not thus, I implore you, Evelyn: do not imagine me the worldly calculator that my enemies deem me.”

   “You have in the merchant the shrewd calculator of probable contingencies; we shall see that we have in the prophet the absolute proclaimer of necessary and inevitable facts.”

4. (obsolete)A set of mathematical tables.