grafter

• Rhymes: -ɑːftə(ɹ), -æftə(ɹ)

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graft +‎ -er

grafter (plural grafters)

1. One who inserts scions on other stocks, or propagates fruit by engrafting.
2. An instrument by which grafting is facilitated.
3. The original tree from which a scion has been taken for grafting upon another tree.
4. (slang) Someone who works in market stalls.
5. (English slang) a hard worker who puts in long hours

• graft

From graft +‎ -er.

grafter (plural grafters)

1. A corrupt person, one who receives graft.
   • 1911, The Twentieth Century Magazine, volume 4, page 335:

     If the people are corrupt; if everybody is a grafter, as our pessimistic friends would have us believe, Roosevelt would be unpopular. His popularity is proog that the people, as a whole, are honest.

   • 1980, David Mark Chalmers, The Muchrake Years, Krieger Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 152:

     It is rather confused rhetoric to call a grafter a thief. His crime is not that he filches money from the safe but that he betrays a trust.

   • 2007, Rebecca Menes, "Limiting the Reach of the Grabbing Hand: Graft and growth in American Cities, 1880 to 1930", in Edward L. Glaeser, Claudia Goldin (eds.), Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report, The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 64.

     Rapid city growth rewarded the circumspect grafter with opportunities for what one famous Tammany Hall politician termed “honest graft” […] .

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