spacer

plural spacers

1. An object inserted to hold a space open in a row of items, e.g. beads or printed type.

   The vertical wall was poured in two lifts, using two pairs of steel shutters which were bolted tightly onto 9-in. long wooden spacers.

   1959 December 28, Richard Hope, “Narrow Gauge Landslip”, in Railway Magazine, page 866

2. literatureA person who works or lives in space.

   "How do I know I can trust you?" asked BKR. Grakker hesitated. "Spacer's oath," he said at last.

   2014 [1993], Bruce Coville, Aliens Ate My Homework, page 134

   3 more examples

   It was the futile throwing back in the face of the Spacers their most keenly felt insult: their insistence on considering the natives of Earth as disgustingly diseased.

   1954, Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

   Shepard: What are you running for? Charles Saracino: I'm seeking one of the five spacer seats in Parliament. They have certain baroque conditions for a citizen to be able to vote for them. Charles Saracino: You have to spend more than six months a year in space. But you can't have stayed in any one settled system for more than a month.

   2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Citadel

   He was thankful that he still had his suit on when the ship had a catastrophic decompression, a spacer's worst nightmare.

   2017, A.K. Brown, Humans on the Menu (Champagne Universe Series: Book 2), page 20

3. A bushing.
4. slangA forgetful person; one who spaces out.
5. medicineA type of add-on device used by an asthmatic person to increase the effectiveness of a metered-dose inhaler.
6. historicalAn instrument for reversing a telegraphic current, especially in a marine cable, to increase the speed of transmission.