sawyer
See also: Sawyer
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English sawyer, sawier, sawior, equivalent to saw + -yer. Doublet of sawer.
Pronunciation edit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈsɔːjə/, /ˈsɔɪ.ə/
Audio (Southern England) (file) - (US, Northern and Western) IPA(key): /ˈsɔɪ.ɚ/
- (US, Southern) IPA(key): /ˈsɔ.jɚ/
- Rhymes: -ɔɪ.ə(ɹ), -ɔː.jə(ɹ)
- Homophone: soya (some accents)
Noun edit
sawyer (plural sawyers)
- One who saws timber, especially in a sawpit.
- (US) A large trunk of a tree brought down by the force of a river's current.
- 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:
- ‘A’most used-up I am, I do declare!’ she observed. ‘The jolting in the cars is pretty nigh as bad as if the rail was full of snags and sawyers.’
- A beetle, mostly in the genus Monochamus, that lives and feeds on trees, including timber.
- (US, dialect) The bowfin.
Quotations edit
- 1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved, Plume (1988), page 50:
- Up and down the lumberyard fence old roses were dying. The sawyer who had planted them twelve years ago to give his workplace a friendly feel—something to take the sin out of slicing trees for a living—was amazed by their abundance.
Related terms edit
Translations edit
one who saws timber
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