adapter

Noun

adapter (plural adapters)

1. One who is capable of adapting to differing situations.
   • He was an able adapter, and could easily adjust to the differences when the company changed ownership.
2. One who adapts a thing, e.g. a play.
   • The critic gave rave reviews to the adapter of the ancient play, who worked to give the text more relevance to the modern day.
3. A device or application used to achieve operative compatibility between devices that otherwise are incompatible.
   • He had an adapter that let him plug his phone into the car's cigarette lighter for power.
   • Sitting in the courtroom ..., their laptops and tablets propped before them, power cables snaking through convoluted adapters, the Twitterati have sight of witnesses at all times – the troubadours, or perhaps the tricoteuses, of the digital revolution.2014 April 24, Alan Cowell, “At Pistorius trial, Twitterati have their day in court”, in The New York Times
   1. Specifically, a device that permits two or more plugs to be used at a single electrical power point.
      • The wall outlet sprouted an electrical monstrosity of adapters plugged into adapters that sparked ominously.
   2. Specifically, a device that allows one format of plug to be used with a different format of socket.
      • We bought adapters to use our three-prong plugs in the two-prong, unpolarized outlets of the old house.
   3. Specifically, an AC adapter: a device that reduces voltage and converts AC to DC to allow a battery-powered device to use mains power.
      • I lost my cellphone's adapter so I couldn't recharge it.
4. (machine learning, artificial intelligence) A collection of low-rank matrices which, when added to a base model, produces a fine-tuned model; a LoRA.