pusher

From push +‎ -er.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpʊʃə/

• Audio (Southern England)

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pusher (plural pushers)

1. Someone or something that pushes. [from 16th c.]

   Coordinate term: pushee

2. A person employed to push passengers onto trains at busy times, so they can depart on schedule.
3. (military slang) A girl or woman. [from 20th c.]
   • 1929, Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, Vintage, published 2014, page 208:

     ‘You should a seed some o' the pushers. Girls o' seventeen painted worse nor any Gerties I'd ever knowed.’

4. (colloquial) A drug dealer. [from 20th c.]
   • 1968, Hoyt Axton (lyrics and music), “The Pusher”, in Steppenwolf, performed by Steppenwolf:

     But the pusher don't care / Ah, if you live or if you die / God damn, the pusher / God damn, I say the pusher

5. (aeronautics) An aircraft with the propeller behind the fuselage. [from 20th c.]
6. A device that one pushes in order to transport a baby while on foot, such as a stroller or pram (as opposed to a carrier such as a front or back pack).
   • 2015, Susanne Hampton, Midwife's Baby Bump, →ISBN, page 160:

     You have two flights of stairs and no elevator. As you get closer to your due date that will be awkward, and once the baby arrives a pusher would never make it up there. You can hardly carry a fully loaded pram and baby up two flights.

   • 2017, Simona Vlad, Nicolae Marius Roman, International Conference on Advancements of Medicine and Health Care through Technology, →ISBN, page 279:

     Two of the participants even decided to purchase a carrier instead of a pusher as they wanted to “permanently hold their baby”.

7. (tennis) A defensive player who does not attempt to hit winners, instead playing slower shots into the opponent's court.
8. (historical, informal) A tolkach.
   • 1993, Bertram Silverman, Robert C. Vogt, Murray Yanowitch, Double Shift, page 249:

     Time-and-motion study meant objective (that is, testable) standards for setting the pace of work so that, when workers complained of speedup, it was now less out of outrage that the foreman was a "pusher" than that the system itself was being violated or manipulated.

   • 2017, Michael Rywkin, Soviet Society Today, page 35:

     Large factories use “pushers” who cajole, threaten, wine, dine, and bribe those in whose hands rests the power to allocate needed resources, machinery, raw materials, or spare parts. It is often the only way to cross the bureaucratic thicket, […]

9. (rail transport) Synonym of banker (“type of railway locomotive”)
10. A device in a coke oven for levelling the coal, traditionally operated by a pusherman.

• (aviation): tractor

• uphers

Borrowed from English pusher.

pusher m or f by sense (plural pushers)

1. pusher (drug dealer)

   Synonym: spacciatore

   • 2018 February 7, “Spari sui neri a Macerata, il ministro Orlando: «Tricolore infangato da un folle»”, in Corriere della Sera‎:

     Nell’inchiesta è entrato intanto in secondo indagato: un pusher nigeriano che avrebbe ceduto a Pamela, allontanatasi dalla Comunità di recupero Pars di Corridonia il 29 gennaio, una dose di eroina nei giardini Diaz di Macerata, luogo di ritrovo di spacciatori, il 30 gennaio, ultimo giorno in cui la ragazza è stata vista in vita.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)