legger: difference between revisions

legger (plural leggers)

1. (informal) A bootlegger.
   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep:

     Oh, you mean the ex-legger the eldest girl picked up and went and married.

2. (British, obsolete) A man employed by the owners of a canal to push boats through narrow canal tunnels. The legger would lie on his back on a piece of wood on the boat with his feet reaching to the tunnel wall, and walk it along. This could be done by the boat's crew, but the canals employed men specifically for the task because they could do it faster and prevent a tunnel becoming a bottleneck for traffic.

• thousand-legger

• eggler

From Middle Dutch legger. Equivalent to leggen +‎ -er. This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. Some of the senses actually arise from liggen, per Etymologiebank

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɛ.ɣər/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: leg‧ger
• Rhymes: -ɛɣər

legger m (plural leggers, diminutive leggertje n)

1. An animal that lays eggs, especially an egg-producing bird.
2. A ledger, register (book for keeping records and/or notes).
3. (textual criticism) A vorlage (edition of a text that is the immediate predecessor or one of the immediate predecessors of another edition).

Akin to Italian leggero, from Latin levis. Compare also French léger.

legger

1. light (of weight)

legger m

1. indefinite plural of legg

legger

1. present active of legge

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• leggar

legger m

1. indefinite plural of legg

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• legg

legger

1. (nonstandard) present of leggja