shaker

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One that shakes: a shaker of long-held beliefs and traditions.
2. n. One that impels, encourages, or supervises action.
3. n. A container used for shaking: salt and pepper shakers.
4. n. A container used to mix or blend by shaking: a cocktail shaker.
5. n. A member of a Christian sect originating in England in 1747, practicing communal living and observing celibacy.
6. adj. Relating to or constituting a style produced by Shakers that is distinctively simple, unornamented, functional, and finely crafted: Shaker furniture.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who or that which shakes.
2. n. Specifically, any mechanical contrivance for shaking: as, a carpet- shaker.
3. n. [capitalized] A member of a religious denomination founded in Manchester, Englancd, about the middle of the eighteenth century: so called, popularly, from the agitations or movements which form part of their ceremonial. Its members call themselves “the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing,” which they maintain took place in 1770 through Mother Ann Lee, their founder, and continued in those who embraced her testimony. They hold that God is male and female, and that he has given to man four revelations, through the patriarchs as the Great Spirit, through the law of Moses and the prophets as Jehovah, through Christ and the primitive disciples as the Father, and through Ann Lee and her successors as the Eternal Mother: the last is to be continuous. They practise oral confession, celibacy, and community of goods, and hold the doctrines of continence, non-resistance, and non-participation in any earthly government. They wear a peculiar dress, and engage chiefly in agriculture (especially the production of herbs) and the manufacture of simple articles, such as brooms and mats. Their principal settlement is at New Lebanon in New York, where they have been since about 1780.
4. n. The quaking-grass
5. n. A breed of domestic pigeons. See pigeon, 1 .

Wiktionary

1. n. A person or thing that shakes, or by means of which something is shaken.
2. n. A variety of pigeon.
3. n. One who holds railroad spikes while they are hammered.
4. n. A musical percussion instrument filled with any of various granular solids used to produce a rhythmyc sound when shaken.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A person or thing that shakes, or by means of which something is shaken.
2. n. One of a religious sect who do not marry, popularly so called from the movements of the members in dancing, which forms a part of their worship.
3. n. (Zoöl.) A variety of pigeon.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a member of Christian group practicing celibacy and communal living and common possession of property and separation from the world
2. n. a container in which something can be shaken
3. n. a person who wields power and influence