collector

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun One that collects.
• noun A person employed to collect taxes, duties, or other payments.
• noun A person who makes a collection, as of stamps.
• noun An electrode collector.
• noun A solar collector.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun One who collects or gathers; especially, one who makes it a pursuit or an amusement to collect objects of interest, as books, paintings, plants, minerals, shells, etc.
• noun A compiler; one who gathers and puts together parts of books, or scattered pieces, in one book.
• noun A person employed to collect dues, public or private; especially, an officer appointed and commissioned to collect and receive customs duties, taxes, or toll within a certain district.
• noun Specifically In British India, the chief administrative official of a zillah or district, charged with the collection of the revenue, and also, except in Bengal proper, possessing certain magisterial powers.
• noun One of two bachelors of arts in Oxford University who are appointed each Lent to divide the determining bachelors into classes and distribute the schools. Also called Lent collectors.
• noun A person appointed to care for the estate of a decedent until letters testamentary or of administration upon it are granted.
• noun In electricity, the upper plate of a disk or condenser, employed for collecting electricity; more generally, any arrangement for collecting electricity.
• noun [plural] Same as collecting-hairs.
• noun In the manufacture of artificial silk, a device for collecting and coalescing several collodion filaments from the spinning-apparatus, and then winding them upon bobbins.

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

• noun One who collects things which are separate; esp., one who makes a business or practice of collecting works of art, objects in natural history, etc..
• noun A compiler of books; one who collects scattered passages and puts them together in one book.
• noun (Com.) An officer appointed and commissioned to collect and receive customs, duties, taxes, or toll.
• noun One authorized to collect debts.
• noun A bachelor of arts in Oxford, formerly appointed to superintend some scholastic proceedings in Lent.

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

• noun A person who or thing which collects, or which creates or manages a collection.
• noun A person who is employed to collect payments.
• noun electronics The amplified terminal on a bipolar junction transistor.
• noun A compiler of books; one who collects scattered passages and puts them together in one book.
• noun historical One holding a Bachelor of Arts in Oxford, formerly appointed to superintend some scholastic proceedings in Lent.

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

• noun a person who collects things
• noun a person who is employed to collect payments (as for rent or taxes)
• noun a crater that has collected cosmic material hitting the earth
• noun the electrode in a transistor through which a primary flow of carriers leaves the region between the electrodes