runner

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Sports One who competes in a race.
2. n. Baseball One who runs the bases.
3. n. Football One who carries the ball.
4. n. A fugitive.
5. n. One who carries messages or runs errands.
6. n. One who serves as an agent or collector, as for a bank or brokerage house.
7. n. One who solicits business, as for a hotel or store.
8. n. A smuggler: a narcotics runner.
9. n. A vessel engaged in smuggling.
10. n. One who operates or manages something: the runner of a series of gambling operations.
11. n. A device in or on which something slides or moves, as:
12. n. The blade of a skate.
13. n. The supports on which a drawer slides.
14. n. A long narrow carpet.
15. n. A long narrow tablecloth.
16. n. A roller towel.
17. n. Metallurgy A channel along which molten metal is poured into a mold; a gate.
18. n. Botany A slender creeping stem that puts forth roots from nodes spaced at intervals along its length.
19. n. Botany A plant, such as the strawberry, having such a stem.
20. n. Botany A twining vine, such as the scarlet runner.
21. n. Any of several marine fishes of the family Carangidae, especially the blue runner (Caranx crysos), of temperate waters of the American Atlantic coast. Also called blue runner.
22. n. Sports See flat¹.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who or that which runs. Specifically— A person who or an animal which moves with the gait called a run, as in a running-match or race.
2. n. One who is in the act of running, as in any game or sport.
3. n. One who frequents or runs habitually to a place.
4. n. A runaway; a fugitive; a deserter.
5. n. One who risks or evades dangers, impediments, or legal restrictions, as in blockade-running or smuggling; especially, a smuggler.
6. n. An operator or manager, as of an engine or a machine.
7. n. One who goes about on any sort of errand; a messenger; specifically, in Great Britain and in the courts of China, a sheriff's officer; a bailiff; in the United States, one whose business it is to solicit passengers for railways, steamboats, etc.
8. n. A commercial traveler. [U. S.]
9. n. A running stream; a run.
10. n. plural In ornithology, specifically, the Cursores or Brevipennes.
11. n. plural In entomology, specifically, the cursorial orthopterous insects; the cockroaches. See Cursoria.
12. n. A carangoid fish, the leather-jacket, Elagatis pinnulatus.
13. n. In botany, a slender prostrate stem, having a bud at the end which sends out leaves and roots, as in the strawberry; also, a plant that spreads by such creeping stems. Compare run, intransitive verb, 10.
14. n. In machinery: The tight pulley of a system of fast-and-loose pulleys
15. n. In a grinding-mill, the stone which is turned, in distinction from the fixed stone, or bedstone. See cuts under mill, 1.
16. n. In a system of pulleys, a block which moves, as distinguished from a block which is held in a fixed position. Also called running block. See cut under pulley.
17. n. A single rope rove through a movable block, having an cye or thimble in the end of which a tackle is hooked.
18. n. In saddlery, a loop of metal, leather, bone, celluloid, ivory, or other material, through which a running or sliding strap or rein is passed: as, the runners for the gag-rein on the throat-latch of a bridle or head-stall.
19. n. In optical-instrument making, a convex cast-iron support for lenses, used in shaping them by grinding.
20. n. That part of anything on which it runs or slides: as, the runner or keel of a sleigh or a skate.
21. n. In molding: A channel cut in the sand of a mold to allow molted metal to run from the furnace to the space to be filled in the mold.
22. n. The small mass of metal left in this channel, which shows, when the mold is removed, as a projection from the casting. See jet, 4 .
23. n. In bookbinding, the front board of the plow-press, used in cutting edges.
24. n. plural In printing: The friction-rollers in the ribs of a printing-press, on which the bed slides to and from impression.
25. n. A line of corks put on a form of type to prevent the inking-rollers from sagging, and over-coloring the types.
26. n. The slide on an umbrella-stick, to which the ribs or spreaders are pivoted.
27. n. In gunpowder-manuf., same as runner-ball.
28. n. In iron-founding, soda-manuf., and other industries in which fusion is a necessary operation, a congealed piece of metal or material which in the molten state has run out of a mold or receptacle, and become waste until remelted.
29. n. In rope-making, a steel plate having three holes concentrically arranged, and used to separate the three yarns in laying up (twisting) a rope. The yarns are passed through the holes, and the plate is kept at a uniform distance from the junction of the twisted and untwisted parts, rendering the twist uniform.
30. n. A market-vessel for the transportation of fish, oysters, etc.
31. n. Same as leather-jacket .
32. n. The common jurel or hardtail, Carangus chrysos.
33. n. A newsboy.
34. n. In hunting, see the extract.
35. n. A wheel for decorating pottery. See coggle. Also called decorating-wheel.
36. n. plural The fibers that fray off the warp-yarn and collect behind the loom-reed in the process of weaving.

Wiktionary

1. n. Agent noun of run; somebody who runs:
2. n. slang A quick escape away from a scene.
3. n. A type of soft-soled shoe originally intended for runners, compare trainer; a sneaker.
4. n. A part of an apparatus that moves quickly
5. n. A mechanical part intended for wheels to run on or to slide against another surface.
6. n. A strip of fabric used to decorate a table.
7. n. A long, narrow carpet for a high traffic area such as a hall or stairs.
8. n. cricket A player who runs for a batsman who is too injured to run; he is dressed exactly as the injured batsman, and carries a bat.
9. n. baseball A player who runs the bases.
10. n. Australian rules football A person (from one or the other team) who runs out onto the field during the game to take verbal instructions from the coach to the players. A runner mustn't interfere with play, and may have to wear an identifying shirt to make clear his or her purpose on the field.
11. n. slang A part of a cigarette that is burning unevenly.
12. n. botany A long stolon sent out by a plant (such as strawberry), in order to root new plantlets.
13. n. climbing A short sling with a karabiner on either end, used to link the climbing rope to a bolt or other protection such as a nut or friend.
14. n. poker slang A competitor in a poker tournament.
15. n. A restaurant employee responsible for taking food from the kitchens to the tables.
16. n. A leaping food fish (Elagatis pinnulatis) of Florida and the West Indies; the skipjack, shoemaker, or yellowtail.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who, or that which, runs; a racer.
2. n. Slang, Eng. A detective.
3. n. A messenger.
4. n. colloq. A smuggler.
5. n. Cant, U.S. One employed to solicit patronage, as for a steamboat, hotel, shop, etc.
6. n. (Bot.) A slender trailing branch which takes root at the joints or end and there forms new plants, as in the strawberry and the common cinquefoil.
7. n. The rotating stone of a set of millstones.
8. n. (Naut.) A rope rove through a block and used to increase the mechanical power of a tackle.
9. n. One of the pieces on which a sled or sleigh slides; also the part or blade of a skate which slides on the ice.
10. n. A horizontal channel in a mold, through which the metal flows to the cavity formed by the pattern; also, the waste metal left in such a channel.
11. n. A trough or channel for leading molten metal from a furnace to a ladle, mold, or pig bed.
12. n. The movable piece to which the ribs of an umbrella are attached.
13. n. (Zoöl.) A food fish (Elagatis pinnulatus) of Florida and the West Indies; -- called also skipjack, shoemaker, and yellowtail. The name alludes to its rapid successive leaps from the water.
14. n. (Zoöl.) Any cursorial bird.
15. n. A movable slab or rubber used in grinding or polishing a surface of stone.
16. n. A tool on which lenses are fastened in a group, for polishing or grinding.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a horizontal branch from the base of plant that produces new plants from buds at its tips
2. n. a trained athlete who competes in foot races
3. n. a person who is employed to deliver messages or documents
4. n. (football) the player who is carrying (and trying to advance) the ball on an offensive play
5. n. device consisting of the parts on which something can slide along
6. n. fish of western Atlantic: Cape Cod to Brazil
7. n. a baseball player on the team at bat who is on base (or attempting to reach a base)
8. n. someone who imports or exports without paying duties
9. n. a long narrow carpet
10. n. someone who travels on foot by running