▪ I. filler1
(ˈfɪlə(r))
[f. fill v. + -er1.]
1. a. One who or that which fills: in various senses of the verb, spec. in Mining.
| 1496 Nottingham Rec. III. 291 To þe fillers þat filled grauell at Trent side. 1541 R. Copland Guydon's Quest. Chirurg., The fyller and nouryssher of the other. 1641 Best Farm. Bks. (Surtees) 59 Hee that forketh the waine is to stande on the stacke [? waine] and forke to the stacke and fillers. 1755 Young Centaur Wks. 1762 IV. 197 Centre of all good! Filler of immensity! 1816 Byron Let. to Moore 5 Jan., The fifteen hundred fillers of hot rooms, called the fashionable world. 1883 Gresley Gloss. Coal-m., Filler, one who fills at a working place or in a stall. 1886 Pall Mall G. 5 Oct. 14/1 The peaches come in large pans, and each ‘filler’ selects with a fork only the perfect halves. 1921 Dict. Occup. Terms (1927) §042 Filler.., shovels coal into trams or tubs or upon conveyor at coal face. 1928 Observer 12 Feb. 21/4 The full effect of the reduction will be felt only by the hewers, fillers, and a few others. 1955 Times 3 May 10/1 The unofficial miners' strike in the Doncaster area arises out of dissatisfaction with the pay of fillers (the men who load coal on the conveyor belts). |
b. Sc. A funnel.
| 1782 Sir J. Sinclair Observ. Scot. Dial. 118 A filler, a funnel. 1847 in Craig. |
c. A filling machine or apparatus. Also attrib., as filler cap, the cap closing the pipe leading to the petrol tank of a motor vehicle; filler hose, the hose of a petrol pump at a garage.
| 1895 Army & Navy Co-op. Soc. Price List 15 Sept. 252/2 Boiler Fillers, galvanized, 2 gall. Ibid. 309 Oil Fillers, 1 pint. 1901 Daily Chron. 10 Sept. 9/1 Mineral Waters.—Experienced respectable young man, accustomed Riley's filler. 1927 Filler-cap [see air-lock b]. 1962 Which? Car Suppl. Oct. 139/2 Petrol filler hoses had damaged the paint finish..and the paintwork was discoloured next to the filler cap. |
2. Something used to fill a cavity, stop a gap, complete a load or charge, make bulk, etc.
| 1591 Greene Disc. Coosnage (1592) 22 Laying in the mouth of the sack certaine choise coles, which they call fillers, to make the sack shew faire. 1697 Dryden æneid Ded. (1709) 297 It [an epithet] is a mere filler, to stop a vacancy in the Hexameter. 1867 Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Filler, a filling piece on a made mast. 1874 Congress. Rec. 10 Jan. 558/1 They will not give beyond so much for a certain class of fillers and a certain class of wrapper. 1884 Pall Mall G. 17 May 4 A cigar consists of three parts, the wrapper, the bunch, and the filler. 1885 Harper's Mag. Mar. 608/2 It consists of..marble blocks inclosing a ‘filler’ of cemented granite stones. 1895 Street Railway Jrnl. Apr. 252 ‘Filler’ wire strand, consisting of 19 wires of the same size with the small wires inserted so as to make the outer wires of the strand tangent to the circumscribed circle. 1904 Goodchild & Tweney Technol. & Sci. Dict. 221/1 Filling up, the process of bringing a surface to a level before painting or between the application of the coats... A good filler for a plastered surface is made by mixing fine plaster of Paris, whiting, and warm size... A paste filler..is used to fill the grain of the wood. 1904 Electr. Rev. 11 Sept. 450 (Cent. Dict. Suppl.), The floor framing consists of six sills, the four centre ones being six-inch ‘I’ beams with wood fillers extending the entire length of car. 1913 Writer's Mag. Dec. 247/1 Fillers of a few hundred words in this field..are desirable in this department. 1916 J. W. Toumey Seeding & Planting 70 The original cost of the seeding or planting can be materially reduced by the use of so-called fillers, i.e. inexpensive species which serve to occupy a portion of the area, but which are removed in the early thinnings. 1930 Engineering 25 Apr. 545/3 The effects of trass as a pozzuolanic material and as a merely inert filler. 1935 Economist 7 Dec. 1142/2 Plastics..may be divided into three main groups: Phenolic and fillers, [etc.]. 1941 E. Culbertson Contract Bridge Complete (ed. 3) iii. 48 Minor intermediate values, or ‘fillers’. These fillers consist of isolated jacks, tens and even nines. 1942 H. A. Maddox Dict. Stationery (ed. 2) 40 Filler, (also known as stuffer), a small inset which is used nowadays as a popular advertising device to enclose in letters or with other literature. A cheap and effective medium of publicity with a saving of postal cost. 1946 N. & Q. CXCI. 238/2 While he was editor..there appeared a series of brief papers (obviously fillers) called ‘Omniana’. 1951 R.. Mayer Artist's Handbk. ii. 89 The inert fillers or extenders are..white or nearly white pigments which have low refractive indices and, therefore, when ground in oil in the manner of the usual artist's colour, have little or no opacity or tinctorial effect. 1954 Paper Terminol. (Spalding & Hodge) 36 Loading, mineral material added to paper pulp..imparting solidity and a good printing surface to the paper... Also called Filler. 1958 Listener 18 Dec. 1055/2 Primer, filler, undercoat, and finish. 1959 F. W. Householder in Saporta & Bastian Psycholinguistics (1961) 25/1 The ‘filler’ part [of a tagmeme] is either another formula..or a list. 1961 John o' London's 13 Apr. 417/3 The American is given the job as a filler while he waits for the post of judge to fall vacant. 1964 M. A. K. Halliday et al. Linguistic Sci. 193 Exclamations and ‘fillers’ such as oh, ah, quoi! |
3. With adverbs, as filler-in, filler-up.
| 1726 Leoni Alberti's Archit. I. 44 b, Those parts which..lie between these principal parts, are very properly call'd fillers up. 1735 Pope Let. to Cromwell 17 Dec. 1710, A Mixture..of forc'd and inextricable Conceits, and of needless fillers-up. 1776 ‘Courtney Melmoth’ Pupil Pleas. I. 217 Detraction is a necessary filler-up of the vacuum. 1877 N.W. Linc. Gloss., Fillers in, small stones in the inside of a rubble-wall. |
4. Comb.: filler-box, a receptacle for prepared clay in a brick machine.
| 1884 C. T. Davis Bricks & Tiles v. 177 It is impossible to fill the charge-boxes, or as they are also termed, the ‘filler-boxes’, with any degree of regularity in dry-clay machines. |
▪ II. filler2
(ˈfɪlə(r))
Also 7 fillar, 9 viller.
[f. fill n.2 + -er1.]
A thill- or shaft-horse. Also attrib. as filler-horse.
| 1695 Kennett Par. Antiq. Gloss. s.v. Pullanus, The horse which goes in the rods is commo[n]ly called the fillar. 1852 C. W. H[oskins] Talpa 3 Just as the filler-horse was congratulating himself that it was all plain sailing now. 1888 Berksh. Gloss., Viller. |
▪ III. ‖ filler3
(ˈfilleːr)
Also fillér.
[Hungarian fillér.]
A Hungarian coin, the hundredth part of a forint.
| 1904 Statesman's Year-Bk. 416 Nickel:—The twenty-heller (20-fillér) piece. 1927 Observer 9 Oct. 11/3 Buyers of the fifty-filler ‘Trianon’ brooch. 1928 Ibid. 15 Apr. 12 Nádosy earned four filler a day. 1947 Statesman's Year-Bk. 1001 A decree of 26 July, 1946, issued by the Hungarian Government..instituted a new monetary unit, the ‘forint’, subdivided into 100 ‘fillér’. |