pricker

English edit

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pricker (plural prickers)

One who pricks.
A tool for pricking.
- 1961 February, ""Balmore"", “Driving and firing modern French steam locomotives - Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, page 112:
  The pricker was used to level the fire half-way up the bank and that was that.
A prickle or thorn.
Any of several American prickly woody vines of the genus Smilax; greenbrier.
One who spurs forward; a light-horseman.
- 1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:
  The prickers, who rode foremost, […] halted.
A priming wire; a priming needle, used in blasting and gunnery.^[1]
(nautical) A small marlinespike used in sailmaking.^[2]

a tool for pricking

^ Edward H[enry] Knight (1877) “Pricker”, in Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary. […], volumes II (GAS–REA), New York, N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton […], →OCLC.
^ 1841, Richard Henry Dana Jr., The Seaman's Friend