stringer

plural stringers

1. Someone who threads something; one who makes or provides strings, especially for bows.

   Be content to put your trust in honest stringers.

   1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus

2. Someone who strings someone along.
3. A horizontal timber that supports upright posts, or supports the hull of a vessel.

   A startled man looked out the office window and then rushed for the door, but the boys were too quick for him. They were lying behind a wooden stringer in the lot before he even got near the door.

   1945, John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

   Synonyms: string, stringboard, stringpiece

4. businessThe side rail supporting the rungs of a ladder or the steps of a flight of stairs.

   Synonyms: stile, rail, string, stringboard, stringpiece

5. A small screw-hook to which piano strings are sometimes attached.
6. journalismA freelance correspondent not on the regular newspaper staff, especially one retained on a part-time basis to report on events in a particular place.

   And he told a few stories about time he had spent in New York in the 1950s as a stringer for the Asahi newspapers… about meeting Diana Vreeland and Truman Capote and Judy Holiday.

   1991, Douglas Coupland, “Enter Hyperspace”, in Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN

7. hobbiesA person who plays on a particular string.
8. hobbiesWooden strip running lengthwise down the centre of a surfboard, for strength.
9. slangball gamesA hard-hit ball.
10. fishingA cord or chain, sometimes with additional loops, that is threaded through the mouth and gills of caught fish.

    "Okay, that's a keeper," Harold said as he netted the 3-pounder and put him on a stringer over the side of the boat.

    1970, Field & Stream, volume 75, number 7, page 76

11. A pallet or skid used when shipping less than truckload (LTL) freight. A platform typically constructed of timber or plastic designed such that freight may be stacked on top, able to be lifted by a forklift.
12. obsoleteA libertine; a wencher.

    A whoreson tyrant! He has been an old stringer in's days

    1607 (first performance), Francis Beaumont, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

13. biologyA person who deliberately states that a certain bird is present when it is not; one who knowingly misleads other birders about the occurrence of a bird, especially a rarity.

    [T]hose fellows know how to spot a stringer at work.

    1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 82

plural Stringers

1. countableuncountableA surname originating as an occupation for a stringer.
2. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Jasper County, Mississippi, United States, named after a postmaster.