identifier

From identify +‎ -er.

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identifier (plural identifiers)

1. Someone who identifies; a person who establishes the identity of someone or something.
   • 2001, Theodore A. Landers, The Career Guide to the Horse Industry‎:

     The Identifier personally inspects each horse in each race by verifying the lip tattoo, body color, head and leg markings, scars, and chestnut (night eyes).

   • 2004, John McEvoy, Great Horse Racing Mysteries: True Tales from the Track‎:

     The foal papers are documents recording the horse's registration; no horse can start in any race unless his papers are in the hands of the track's identifier.

   • 2007, Paolo Tombesi, Osamu Hirota, Quantum Communication, Computing, and Measurement 3, page 291:

     Here, we would use the anonymous key technique to obtain a quantum identification protocol AKI of the challenge-response type in which the identifier cannot pretend to be the identifiee […]

2. Something that identifies or uniquely points to something or someone else.
   • 2008, Ted Dunstone, Neil Yager, Biometric System and Data Analysis:

     Prehistoric artists used hand-prints in cave paintings, perhaps as a 'signature'. They might be considered the earliest example of a biometric identifier.

3. One who identifies as a particular type or role; one who says and believes that they are a certain thing.
   • 2019, Raina Simone Henderson, The Cost of Identity, page 80:

     While the DOJ and BOJS already calculate data by gender, trans identifiers are not included, it is solely by men and women

4. A guidebook that helps determine the specific class of an object (such as a mushroom, herb, fish, bird, drug, or mineral), or its individual identity (such as that of a star).
5. (programming, operating systems) A formal name used in source code to refer to a variable, function, procedure, package, etc. or in an operating system to refer to a process, user, group, etc.
7. (HTML) A code that distinguishes a particular element from all other elements in a document.
8. (databases) A primary key.

• identifiee

• authenticator (an identifier asserts identity; an authenticator verifies it)

• id
• ID

• identifier on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Borrowed from Medieval Latin identificāre.

• IPA^(key): /i.dɑ̃.ti.fje/

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identifier

1. to identify
2. to log in

• “identifier”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.