leveller

alternative leveler

1. UKcomparativecomparative form of level: more level

plural levellers · alternative leveler

1. UKA person or thing that levels.

   A soil leveller is used to prepare the field before sowing.

   1. UKA device used to stabilize wobbly tables, chair legs, or other furniture.

      I adjusted the leveller built into each leg of the table, but it still wobbled.

2. UKSomething that transcends people’s differences (such as social class, wealth, etc.); something that tends to eliminate advantages and disadvantages.

   The army is viewed not only as a social leveler but also as a means of unifying a country with three cultures and four languages.

   2001 December 3, Elizabeth Olson, “Swiss Voters Reject Effort to Abolish Their Army”, in The New York Times

   3 more examples

   Conversation is not to be met with in large and mixed companies; and a card-table, considered as an universal leveller, may have its use, by placing the weak and timid on a par with the most lively and overbearing.

   1782, Elizabeth Griffith, “Domestic Amusement”, in Essays, Addressed to Young Married Women, London: T. Cadell & J. Robson, page 68

   All the captives, the innocent as well as the guilty, gladly subscribed to the terms; for they found themselves in a temporary duresse which did not admit of any fair argument of the merits of the case, and there is no leveller so effectual as a common misfortune.

   1833, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 16, in The Headsman: The Abbaye des Vignerons

   Everything about the old man was clean, if coarse; and, with Death, the leveller, so close at hand, it was the labourer who made the first advances, and put out his horny hand to the Squire.

   1864 August – 1866 January, [Elizabeth] Gaskell, chapter 30, in Wives and Daughters. An Every-day Story. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published 1866, →OCLC

3. UKA person holding a political opinion in favor of eliminating disparities between the haves and the have-nots.

   2 more examples

   Among the independents, who, in general, were for having no eccleſiaſtical ſubordination, a ſet of men grew up called Levellers, who diſallowed all ſubordination whatſoever, and declared that they would have no other chaplain, king, or general, but Chriſt. They declared that all men were equal; that all degrees and ranks should be levelled, and an exact partition of property eſtabliſhed in the nation.

   1771, [Oliver] Goldsmith, “Charles I. (Continued.)”, in The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II. […], volume III, London: […] T[homas] Davies, […]; [T.] Becket and [P. A.] De Hondt; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, pages 299–300

   […] there was no sympathy and connection between the upper and the lower people of the Irish. To one who had been bred so much abroad as myself, this difference between Catholic and Protestant was doubly striking; and though as firm as a rock in my own faith, yet I could not help remembering my grandfather held a different one, and wondering that there should be such a political difference between the two. I passed among my neighbours for a dangerous leveller, for entertaining and expressing such opinions […]

   1844, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 17, in The Luck of Barry Lyndon

4. UKhobbiesAn equaliser.

   Cardiff pressed for a leveller to force the tie into penalties, but Stoke comfortably held out and Walters added his second finishing from a tight angle after his first shot was beaten back to him by Heaton.

   2011 January 18, David Dulin, “Cardiff 0 - 2 Stoke”, in BBC

plural Levellers

1. A member of the Levellers.