sporter

sport +‎ -er

• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)tə(ɹ)

sporter (plural sporters)

1. Someone who sports something.
   • 2009 January 8, David Colman, “Inching Its Way Back Onto the Lip”, in New York Times‎:

     But today, the mustache cannot shake its ties to the sexy-yet-buffoonish machismo of the mid-1970s, epitomized by Burt Reynolds, Sam Elliott and the Village People, 'stache sporters all.

2. (firearms) A firearm suitable for sporting use.
3. (archaic) One who takes part in sport or games.
   • 1780, The London Magazine, Or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer:

     Charles Lack-wit will have it given out, he is retired into the country, only for the reputation of being thought a man of fashion, when all the while his retirement is to be incessantly hurried with the violence of a madman after a pack of yelping hounds; or brutally murdering whole months of delicious time in noisy laughter, wine, and ribaldry, with Sir Jolly Timberscull, 'Squire Humdrum, and the rest of the club of gentlemen sporters.

4. One who sports or plays with something; a trifler.
   • 1823, The Monthly Gazette of Health, page 557:

     We have, however, good reason to suspect the Legislature will soon adopt means of rewarding the ingenuity of these indirect sporters with human life.

• Trosper, perrots, porrets, porters, presort, pretors, proters, reports, tropers

Either from sporten +‎ -er or borrowed from English sporter. The verb sporten is attested a few years later than sporter.

• IPA^(key): /ˈspɔr.tər/

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• Hyphenation: spor‧ter

sporter m (plural sporters, diminutive sportertje n)

1. one who plays a sport (habitually) [from ca. 1890]

• sporten

• stroper

sporter

1. indefinite plural of sport