sawyer

• sawier (obsolete)

From Middle English sawyer, sawier, sawior, equivalent to saw +‎ -yer. Doublet of sawer.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔːjə/, /ˈsɔɪ.ə/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (US, Northern and Western) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔɪ.ɚ/
• (US, Southern) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔ.jɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɔɪ.ə(ɹ), -ɔː.jə(ɹ)
• Homophone: soya (some accents)

sawyer (plural sawyers)

1. One who saws timber, especially in a sawpit.
2. (US) A large trunk of a tree brought down by the force of a river's current.
   • 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:

     ‘A’most used-up I am, I do declare!’ she observed. ‘The jolting in the cars is pretty nigh as bad as if the rail was full of snags and sawyers.’

3. A beetle, mostly in the genus Monochamus, that lives and feeds on trees, including timber.
4. (US, dialect) The bowfin.

• 1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved, Plume (1988), page 50:

  Up and down the lumberyard fence old roses were dying. The sawyer who had planted them twelve years ago to give his workplace a friendly feel—something to take the sin out of slicing trees for a living—was amazed by their abundance.

• fret-sawyer

• Erways, Swarey, Wearys, swayer, sweary