Definitions

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

  • noun One that carries or supports, as.
  • noun A porter.
  • noun A pallbearer.
  • noun One that holds a check or other redeemable note for payment.
  • noun A fruit- or flower-bearing plant.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who bears, carries, or sustains; a carrier; specifically, one who carries anything as the attendant of another: as, St. Christopher, or the Christ-bearer (the meaning of the name); a sword-bearer, an armor-bearer, a palanquin-bearer, etc.
  • noun One who carries a body to the grave; a pall-bearer.
  • noun In India: A palanquin-carrier. A domestic servant who has charge of his master's clothes, furniture, etc.
  • noun In banking and com., one who holds or presents for payment a check or order for money, payment of which is not limited by the drawer to a specified individual or firm. Checks payable to bearer need no indorsement.
  • noun One who wears anything, as a badge or sword; a wearer.
  • noun In old law, one who bears down or oppresses others by vexatiously assisting a third party in maintaining a suit against them; a maintainor.
  • noun Any part of a structure or machine that serves as a support to some other part A support for the fire-bars of a furnace. The support of the puppets in a lathe. plural In a rolling-mill, the housings or standards in which the roller-gudgeons turn. One of the strips which extend over a molding-trough and serve to support the fiask.
  • noun In printing: A strip of wood or metal, type-high, put in any exposed place in a form of type or on a press, for the purpose of bearing off impression and preventing injury to type or woodcuts. plural Type-high pieces of metal placed in the very open spaces and over the heads of pages to be stereotyped, and also type-high strips of metal placed around pages or forms to be electrotyped, to prevent injury to the face of the type or the plates in the subsequent processes, and cut away from the plates before printing.
  • noun In heraldry, a supporter.
  • noun A roll of padding forming a kind of bustle, formerly worn by women to support and distend their skirts “at their setting on at the bodies.”
  • noun In an organ, one of the thin pieces of wood attached to the upper side of a sound-board, to form guides for the register-slides which command the openings in the top of a wind-chest leading to the pipes of the separate systems of pipes which form the stops.
  • noun A tree or plant that yields fruit or flowers.
  • noun In shipbuilding, a support or foundation in the interior of a vessel for engines or boilers: usually in the plural: as, engine-bearers, boiler-bearers.
  • noun A person, usually a woman or girl, who formerly carried coal in baskets from the workings to the shaft, and in many cases up the ladders to the surface. The bearer was usually the miner's wife or daughter.
  • noun In geometry, a system of costraight points is called a range, of which the straight is the bearer. A system of copunctal straights is called a pencil, of which the intersection point is the bearer.
  • noun plural In mining, pieces of timber 3 or 4 feet longer than the breadth of a shaft, which are fixed into the solid rock at the sides at certain intervals: used as foundations for sets of timber.

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

  • noun One who, or that which, bears, sustains, or carries.
  • noun Specifically: One who assists in carrying a body to the grave; a pallbearer.
  • noun India A palanquin carrier; also, a house servant.
  • noun A tree or plant yielding fruit.
  • noun (Com.) One who holds a check, note, draft, or other order for the payment of money.
  • noun (Print.) A strip of reglet or other furniture to bear off the impression from a blank page; also, a type or type-high piece of metal interspersed in blank parts to support the plate when it is shaved.

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

  • noun One who, or that which, bears, sustains, or carries.
  • noun Someone who helps carry the coffin or a dead body during a funeral procession; pallbearer.
  • noun One who possesses a cheque, bond, or other notes promising payment.
  • noun India, dated A domestic servant or palanquin carrier.
  • noun A tree or plant yielding fruit.
  • noun printing A strip of reglet or other furniture to bear off the impression from a blank page.
  • noun printing A type or type-high piece of metal interspersed in blank parts to support the plate when it is shaved.

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

  • noun the person who is in possession of a check or note or bond or document of title that is endorsed to him or to whoever holds it
  • noun someone whose employment involves carrying something
  • noun a messenger who bears or presents
  • noun one of the mourners carrying the coffin at a funeral

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

bear +‎ -er

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