roller

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Definitions (63)

Toggle American Heritage Dictionary definitions American Heritage Dictionary (12)

  1. noun One that rolls or performs a rolling operation or activity.
  2. noun Any of various cylindrical or spherical devices that roll or rotate, especially:
  3. noun A small spokeless wheel, such as that of a roller skate or caster.
  4. noun An elongated cylinder on which something, such as a window shade or towel, is wound.
  5. noun A heavy revolving cylinder that is used to level, crush, or smooth.
  6. noun Printing A cylinder, usually of hard rubber, used to ink the type before the paper is impressed.
  7. noun A cylinder of wire mesh, foam rubber, or other material around which a strand of hair is wound to produce a soft curl or wave.
  8. noun A long rolled bandage.
  9. noun A heavy swelling wave that breaks on a coast.
  10. noun A tumbler pigeon.
  11. noun Any of various Old World birds of the family Coraciidae, having bright blue wings, stocky bodies, and hooked bills. They are noted for their aggressiveness and their habit of rolling and twisting in flight, especially during the breeding season.
  12. noun A canary that trills.

Toggle Century Dictionary definitions Century Dictionary (43)

  1. One who or that which rolls, especially a cylinder which turns on its axis, used for various purposes, as smoothing, crushing, and spreading out. A heavy cylinder of wood, stone, or (now more usually) metal set in a frame, used in agriculture, gardening, road-making, etc., to break lumps of earth, press the ground compactly about newly sown seeds, compress and smooth the surface of grass-fields, level the surface of walks or roads, etc. Land-rollers are also constructed of a series of disks or a series of rings with serrated edges placed side by side. Such rollers are used for breaking up clods and cutting up rough grass-land, and are known as disk-rollers and clod-crushers. Heavy road-rollers are often combined with steam traction-engines. Agricultural rollers are also combined with other tools, as with a seeder or a harrow. See roll, n., 2. Pope's [page] is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller. Johnson, Pope.
  2. A rolling-pin.
  3. In printing, a cylindrical rod of iron covered with a thick composition of glue and molasses, or glue, sugar, and glycerin, which takes ink on its surface by rolling on a table or against other rollers, and which deposits this ink on types when it is rolled over them.
  4. In etching, a cylinder, about three inches in diameter, covered with soft leather, and used for revarnishing an imperfectly bitten plate. The ground is applied to the roller with a palette-knife on which a little has been taken up. When the ground has, by repeated passing, been evenly spread over all parts of the roller, this is carefully passed with slight pressure over the etched plate so as to cover its surface with varnish, without allowing it to enter the furrows.
  5. In organ-building, a wooden bar with pins in the ends upon which it may be rolled or rocked, and two projecting arms, usually at some distance from each other, one of which is pulled by a tracker from the keyboards, while the other pulls a tracker attached to a valve. Rollers are primarily designed to transfer motion from side to side, but they also often change it from a horizontal to a vertical plane, or vice versa. The rollers belonging to a single keyboard are usually placed together on a common roller-board, and the entire mechanism is called a roller-board action or movement. See cut under organ.
  6. Any cylindrical tool or part of a machine serving to press, flatten, guide, etc., as the cylinders of a paper-making machine, the impression-cylinders in calico-printing, the roller-die by means of which patterns are transferred to such cylinders, etc.
  7. The barrel of a musical box or of a chime-ringing machine.
  8. That upon which something may be rolled up, as a wooden cylinder, or pasteboard rolled up, usually with a circular section.
  9. A cylindrical or spherical body upon which a heavy body can be rolled or moved along: used to lessen friction. What mighty Rowlers, and what massie Cars, Could bring so far so many monstrous Quars? Sylvester, tr. of Du Bartas's Weeks, ii., The Magnificence.
  10. Specifically— A cylindrical piece of wood put under a heavy stone to facilitate moving it.
  11. A wheel in a roller-skate.
  12. The wheel of a caster.
  13. Same as roller-towel. [Colloq.]
  14. A stout heavy sheave which revolves and saves a rope that passes over it from wear by friction.
  15. A go-cart for a child. He could run about without a rowler or leading-strings. Smith, Lives of Highwaymen, II. 50. (Encyc. Dict.)
  16. That in which something may be rolled; a bandage; specifically, a long rolled bandage used in surgery. It is unrolled as it is used. I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it. Ezek. xxx. 21.
  17. In saddlery, a broad padded surcingle, serving as a girth to hold a heavy blanket in place. E. H. Knight.
  18. Along, heavy, swelling wave, such as sets in upon a coast after the subsiding of a storm. From their feet stretched away to the westward the sapphire rollers of the vast Atlantic, crowned with a thousand crests of flying foam. Kingsley, Westward Ho, xxxii. The league-long roller thundering on the reef. Tennyson, Enoch Arden.
  19. In ornithology: Any bird of the family Coraciidæ: so called from the way they roll or tumble about in flight. The common roller of Europe, Asia, and Africa is Coracias garrula. There are many other species, of several different genera. The Madagascar ground-rollers are birds of the genera Brachypteracias and Atelornis. See cut under Coracias.
  20. A kind of domestic pigeon; one of the varieties of tumblers.
  21. In herpetology, a snake of the family Tortricidæ; a shorttail.
  22. The rockfish or striped-bass, Roccus lineatus. [Maryland.]
  23. Breaking-down rollers in metal-working, rollers used to roll the metal while it is hot, for the purpose of consolidating it.
  24. Damping-roller. See damping.
  25. Delivery-roller. See delivery.
  26. Diluting roller in a paper-making machine, a roller which carries water into the pulp-cistern to reduce the density of the pulp.
  27. Distributing-roller a roller in the inking-apparatus of a printing-press between the ductor and the inking-rolls; a waver.
  28. Drawing-rollers in a drawing-machine, the fluted rollers by which the sliver is elongated.
  29. Dutch roller a kind of domestic pigeon, a variety of the tumbler. Darwin.
  30. Fancy roller. See fancy.
  31. Lithographic roller. See lithographic.
  32. Printers' roller. See inking-roller.
  33. Roller bandage. Same as roller, 5.
  34. Roller bolt. See bolt.
  35. Roller handspike. See handspike.
  36. Side roller in sugar manufacturing, one of the side cylinders of the press. See king-roller and macasse.
  37. The rollers the local name of a heavy surf peculiar to St. Helena and the Island of Ascension. Rollers prevail on the leeward side of the island after a period of strong trades, and are due to the confluence of the swell passing around the island by the right with that passing around by the left, the swell being also heightened by the surrounding shoals. The resulting surf is so dangerous to shipping that single and double roller-flags are displayed to warn small craft against making for land while the rollers prevail.
  38. Same as sand-roller.
  39. Casting hall roller in glass manufacturing, same as running-roll (which see).
  40. Nipping-rollers a pair of cylindrical rollers used in bleaching-works and dye-works to squeeze cloth which is to be uniformly impregnated with a liquid. Also known as squeezing-rollers.
  41. Roller process. See process.
  42. Squeezing-rollers. Same as nipping-rollers.
  43. Stepped roller a conical roller with steps; part of a warp-shedding mechanism in a loom for keeping the heddle-strap at tension. T. W. Fox, Mechanism of Weaving, p. 45.

Toggle GNU Webster's 1913 definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

  1. One who, or that which, rolls; especially, a cylinder, sometimes grooved, of wood, stone, metal, etc., used in husbandry and the arts.

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (7)

  1. a grounder that rolls along the infield
  2. pigeon that executes backward somersaults in flight or on the ground
  3. Old World bird that tumbles or rolls in flight; related to kingfishers
  4. a mechanical device consisting of a cylindrical tube around which the hair is wound to curl it
  5. a cylinder that revolves
  6. a small wheel without spokes (as on a roller skate)
  7. a long heavy sea wave as it advances towards the shore

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