governor.

1. A device that regulates the operating speed of a machine.

2. A person with governing authority over a territory, institution, or other body.

3. A linguistic element that determines or licenses another element’s form or syntactic relation.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a speed governor
• engine governor

On the page

The governor reduced the engine’s speed under the changed conditions.

They found that the governor had been disconnected.

Usage notes

Primary category: sci-fi. Forms: Singular governor; plural governors. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.