caster

See also: Caster

English

casters on a swivel chair (2)
silver caster (3), early 18th c.

Alternative forms

Etymology

cast + -er; the wheel sense comes from obsolete cast (to turn).

Pronunciation

Noun

caster (plural casters)

  1. Someone or something that casts.
    a caster of spells
    a caster of stones
    a caster of bronze statuary
  2. A wheeled assembly attached to a larger object at its base to facilitate rolling. A caster usually consists of a wheel (which may be plastic, a hard elastomer, or metal), an axle, a mounting provision (usually a stem, flange, or plate), and sometimes a swivel (which allows the caster to rotate for steering).
    Many office chairs roll on a set of casters.
    • 1980 August 30, Nancy Walker, “My Boss Comes Out”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 6, page 7:
      I have my own phone, an electric typewriter and a lovely chair with casters. The floor is carpeted, the lighting is very adequate.
  3. A shaker with a perforated top for sprinkling condiments such as sugar, salt, pepper, etc.
    Synonym: cruet
    a set of casters
    • 1860 January 28 – October 13, Charles Dickens, chapter VI, in The Uncommercial Traveller, London: Chapman and Hall, [], published 1861, →OCLC:
      Your waiter having settled that point, returns to array your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen casters with nothing in them; []
    • 1910, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Girl and the Habit”, in Strictly Business:
      She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle’s casters.
  4. A stand to hold a set of shakers or cruets.
  5. (automotive) The angle of the axis around which a car's front wheels rotate when the steering wheel is turned, with a vertical axis being defined as zero caster.
    • 2008, Ronald G Haefner, The Car Care Book, →ISBN, page 238:
      In addition, caster helps to reduce steering effort and to return the steering wheel to the center position after a turn.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Verb

caster (third-person singular simple present casters, present participle castering, simple past and past participle castered)

  1. To act as a caster

Anagrams

French

Etymology

From English cast.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kas.te/
  • (file)
  • (file)

Verb

caster

  1. (transitive) to cast (a spell)
  2. (transitive, film) to cast (into a role)

Conjugation

Derived terms

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