typewriter

plural typewriters

1. A device, at least partially mechanical, used to print text by pressing keys that cause type to be impressed through an inked ribbon onto paper.
2. archaicOne who uses a typewriter; a typist.

   The typewriter got up and disappeared out a back door, and soon she come back with a man, and he said, "Can I be of some help, Mr. Higgens?"

   1953, Mike Harris, The Southpaw

   2 more examples

   So many mongrel words, like typist and typewritist, have been introduced, we propose a fixed designation of—typewriter, to mean the person who writes, and writing machine, the device.

   1894, Bates Torrey, “Lesson XIII”, in Practical Typewriting: by the All‐Finger Method, Which Leads to Operation by Touch, 3rd edition, New York: Fowler & Wells Co., (59.) Letter Writing, page 26

   He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in a veranda-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day.

   1896 November – 1897 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Captains Courageous”, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, published 1897, →OCLC

   Synonyms: typist

3. USdatedslangA machine gun or submachine gun (from the noise it makes when firing).

   Fortunately we were on the edge of a shallow shell hole when the sentry caught our movements and Fritz cut loose with the "typewriters."

   2005, R. Derby Holmes, A Yankee in the Trenches, page 60

   3 more examples

   The battle had opened in earnest. From the wooded ridge came in reply the clacking of "typewriters,” and bullets whined over our heads.

   1973, Edgar B. Jackson, Fall Out to the Right of the Road!, page 321

   It was like sinking to sleep in a soft, dry bed with a big drink of brandy in you after you're dog-tired from a tour of duty on the firing-step, or slipping into a warm bath when you're lousy-dirty and chilled to the bone from crawling through mud and filth and dodging flares and 'typewriter' bullets half the night.

   1996, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Virtuous vampires, page 250

   Why, any day I'd go up against a typewriter, with a forty-five. One shot I'd need and there'd be time for three while he was getting that damn' thing swung around and pointed —

   2001, Fredric Brown, Ben Yalow, From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown, page 234

4. A prank in which fingers are jabbed roughly onto someone's chest followed by striking them over the ear in imitation of using an old-fashioned typewriter.