porter
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈpɔɹtɚ/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈpɔːtə/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA(key): /ˈpo(ː)ɹtɚ/
- (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA(key): /ˈpoətə/
- Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)tə(ɹ)
Etymology 1
[edit]From Middle English porter, portere, portier, borrowed from Anglo-Norman portour and Old French porteor, from Late Latin portātor, from past participle of Latin portāre (“to carry”). By surface analysis, port (“to carry”) + -er.
Noun
[edit]porter (plural porters)
- A person who carries luggage and related objects; (historically) one who carried luggage or did manual labour in the transloading of cargo.
- goods porter
- By the time I reached the train station I was exhausted, but fortunately there was a porter waiting.
- c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
- Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.
- 1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC:
- the unsmotherable delight of all the porters and by - standers
- 1954 February, Trevor Holloway, “Canada's Transcontinental Routes”, in Railway Magazine, page 130:
- The man who carries your luggage at the station is a "red cap", not a porter. The Canadian porter is the man who makes up the beds in the sleeping cars.
- 1958 February, Arthur F. Beckenham, “A Journey in the Belgian Congo”, in Railway Magazine, page 125:
- As soon as we had come to a stand in Kamina Station, a swarm of porters pushed their way into the compartment to get my luggage. I selected one, and ordered the others out, and then detrained.
- 2022 December 14, David Turner, “The Edwardian Christmas getaway...”, in RAIL, number 972, page 35:
- Tips were an important part of porters' income, and at Christmas passengers felt there was extra pressure to give them - despite some perceiving the level of service to be poor.
- (entomology) An ant having the specialized role of carrying.
- (computing) One who ports software (makes it usable on another platform).
- 1998, Michael McMillan, Perl from the Ground Up, page 45:
- […] useful only if you are a Perl porter or implementor and you want to check the efficiency of the hashing algorithm.
Hyponyms
[edit]- (carrier of burdens): jampani (jampan-bearer); dandy-wallah (dandy-bearer), skycap
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]person who carries luggage
