basher

bash +‎ -er

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbæʃɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbæʃə/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æʃə(ɹ)

basher (plural bashers)

1. One who bashes something, figuratively or literally.
   • 1967, J. A. Baker, The Peregrine, page 14:

     Consider the cold-eyed thrush, that springy carnivore of lawns, worm stabber, basher to death of snails.

2. (informal) One who engages in gratuitous physical or verbal attacks on a group or type of people.

   a Paki-basher

   He was beaten up by a queer-basher.

   • 1991 August 17, Steve Karpf, “Don't Tread On Us!”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 5, page 1:

     It's impossible to count how many harassers and bashers are growing discouraged at the sight of 12 or so queers in black and teal uniforms walking down the street in tight formation. The message is simple: queer folk are banding together and walking the streets in cities around the United States to protect their own.

3. (UK, slang) A trainspotter.
   • 2015, Nicholas Whittaker, Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as 20th-Century Hero:

     Nose around any modest-sized station and the odds are you'll find that the chargeman's office doubles as a bashers' club, a place where shivering spotters can get warm and catch up on the gen.

   • 2017, Ian Carter, British railway enthusiasm, page 102:

     Determined 'bashers' do still ride trains, of course, seeking to cram the largest number of route-miles into 24 hours.

4. (military, slang) A rainproof sheet for sleeping under.
   • 2014, LA Clarke, Callsign Whiskey, page 24:

     Suddenly awake she looked around, startled, it was light, hot, intensely hot and she was sleeping in a shell scrape under a basher.

   • 2018, John-Paul Jordan, Joys of War:

     I was well used to sleeping out under the stars whatever the weather. I had a hammock and a basher, a rain sheet to go over where I was sleeping.

5. (slang) A shelter built from improvised materials by a homeless person.
6. (television, film) A kind of small floodlight.

• (homeless shelter): Tony Thorne (2014) “basher”, in Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, 4th edition, London,  […]: Bloomsbury

• Absher, Baehrs, Behars, rehabs