climber

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One that climbs, especially a person who climbs mountains.
2. n. Sports A device, such as a crampon, used in mountain climbing.
3. n. A plant that climbs.
4. n. A person who avidly seeks a higher social or professional position.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who or that which climbs, mounts, or rises; one who ascends by labor or effort.
2. n. In botany, a plant that rises by attaching itself to some support; specifically, in England, the virgin's-bower, Clematis Vitalba. Climbing plants are distinguished as stem-climbers, which, like the hop, wind upward around an upright support, and as tendril-climbers, which, like the grape-vine, cling to adjacent objects by slender coiling tendrils. Other plants climb also by means of retrorse bristles or spines, or by means of rootlets.
3. n. plural In ornithology, the birds of the old order Scansores, as the parrots, cockatoos, woodpeckers, etc.: so called from their climbing habits. They have two toes before and two behind.
4. n. A locomotive with driving-wheels fitted to a cog-rail, for ascending steep grades.
5. n. plural Same asclimbing-irons.
6. To climb; mount with effort; clamber.

Wiktionary

1. n. A person who climbs.
2. n. A plant that climbs, such as a vine.
3. v. obsolete To climb; to mount with effort; to clamber.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) A plant that climbs.
2. n. (Zoöl.) A bird that climbs, as a woodpecker or a parrot.
3. v. obsolete To climb; to mount with effort; to clamber.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a vine or climbing plant that readily grows up a support or over other plants
2. n. someone who climbs as a sport; especially someone who climbs mountains
3. n. someone seeking social prominence by obsequious behavior
4. n. someone who ascends on foot
5. n. an iron spike attached to the shoe to prevent slipping on ice when walking or climbing