▪ I. stripper1
(ˈstrɪpə(r))
[f. strip v.1 + -er1.]
1. a. One who strips another; also one who strips or strips off some article or product, e.g. bark of a tree, tobacco, the accumulation of shoddy in a carding-machine.
| 1581 Mulcaster Positions xxxvii. (1887) 162 Preferment to degrees in schole..ought to be a mightier stripper of insufficiencie. 1611 Cotgr., Spoliateur, a spoyler; stripper, despoyler. a 1722 Lisle Husb. (1757) 367 The greater the flush of sap..it makes the better bark, and is better both for the tanner and the stripper. 1859 Fairholt Tobacco vi. 305 The ‘stripper’ performs her duties by folding the tobacco-leaf, and..cutting under both sides of the thick end of the stalk. 1876 Smiles Sc. Naturalist iii, 48 Each spinner had three boys under him—the wheeler, the pointer, and the stripper. 1886 Ld. Walsingham & Payne-Gallwey Shooting I. 71 The stripper takes the gun to pieces down to the minutest detail, and carefully examines and regulates it in every way. 1890 Melbourne Argus 10 June 5/2 Had strippers been allowed to take out licenses to strip the wattles of their bark. |
b. colloq. (orig. U.S.). A performer of strip-tease.
| 1930 Variety 3 Dec. 54/5 (heading) Detroit censor pinches four stock strippers. 1945 P. Cheyney I'll say she Does! ii. 42, I was a stripper one time... I had a feature spot in the programme. 1950 Manch. Guardian Weekly 13 July 13/2 A couple of famous strippers and a beloved Broadway comedian appeared in something called ‘Wine, Women, and Song’. 1960 New Left Rev. Mar.–Apr. 45/2 The calculated obscenity of the stripper's act. 1972 C. Weston Poor, Poor Ophelia v. 27 She unzipped her..mini-dress, and with the grace of a professional stripper, stepped out of it. 1980 Times 21 Oct. 12/6 (caption) Why should it only be male strippers who are subsidized? |
2. a. A machine or appliance for stripping.
| 1835 [see strip v. 20]. 1856 P. Kennedy Banks of Boro xli. (1867) 339 A..pair of strippers (curved chisels for stripping off bark). 1874 Knight Dict. Mech. 842/2 A frame..which may be elevated to raise the stripper off the file through the instrumentality of a rock-shaft and a system of levers. 1875 Ibid. 2430/2 Stripper 2. (Carding) a device for lifting the top flats from the carding-cylinder. 1882 Essex Herald No 4269/3 A stripper is a labour saving machine used in..Victoria... Its object is to strip the heads from the standing corn and thrash them at one operation. 1886 Pall Mall Gaz. 6 Apr. 14/2 One by one the [willow-] switches are placed in the mechanical stripper. |
| attrib. 1839 Ure Dict. Arts 349 [Carding] This shaft drives the crank and lever mechanism of the stripper knife. 1908 Westm. Gaz. 12 Mar. 2/1 Sir William Lyne proposed to raise the duty from {pstlg}12 to {pstlg}16 for ‘stripper harvesters’. |
b. Oil Industry. A still for the fractionation of oil or oil products.
| 1930 H. S. Bell Amer. Petroleum Refining (ed. 2) xii. 222 Reboiling coils are sometimes used as strippers. 1938 A. E. Dunstan et al. Sci. of Petroleum II. ii. xxv. 1559/2 Reheaters, when used, usually have been placed on the oil stream flowing from one of the lower plates of the stripper. 1961 D. Petrie Petroleum xi. 64 In order to make the fractionation process even more exact, each fraction when it leaves the tower is led into another smaller fractionating tower called a ‘side stripper’. 1975 W. G. Roberts Quest for Oil (rev. ed.) viii. 85 The purpose of the stripper is to remove small amounts of vapour from the liquid entering it. |
c. Physics. In a particle accelerator, a section containing metal foil or gas at a high positive potential, which removes electrons from the ions passing through it. Also attrib.
| 1959 Nuclear Instruments & Methods IV. 123/2 The image size and beam divergence required at the object point for the accelerator are limited by the dimensions of the stripper tube. 1974 J. B. A. England Techniques in Nuclear Structure Physics i. iii. 268 There is usually little to choose in final beam intensity between foil strippers and gas strippers for hydrogen and helium ions. 1979 Sci. Amer. Apr. 47/2 The aiming mechanism would first direct the negative-hydrogen beam at the target and then pass it through a gas ‘stripper’ for neutralization. |
3. pl. Gaming. ‘High cards cut wedge-shape, a little wider than the rest, so as to be easily drawn in a crooked game’ (Farmer & Henley).
| 1843 J. H. Greene Exposure Arts & Miseries Gambling (1845) 121 When cards are prepared as I have above described, they are called strippers. 1887 F. Francis jun. Saddle & Mocassin 228 A tender-foot got in amongst the gamblers on board.., and what with ‘strippers’, and ‘stocking’, and ‘cold decks’,..and so forth, he hadn't the ghost of a show. 1894 Maskelyne Sharps & Flats 222 The most commonly used form of cards, however, is that of the ‘double-wedges’ or ‘strippers’. |
4. a. A bleaching agent or solvent used to remove colour from fabrics before re-dyeing. Cf. strip v.1 21.
| 1909 A. Morris in Rothery & Edmunds Mod. Laundry II. xl. 150 Permanganic acid in the form of its potash or soda salt is a powerful oxidizing stripper. 1957 Woman 16 Nov. 25/4 Light over dark won't go, but if you want to try it you'll need a colour ‘stripper’. |
b. A chemical preparation used to remove paint, varnish, etc., from a surface; paint stripper: see paint n. 7.
| 1937 A. Jones Cellulose Lacquers, Finishes & Cements xii. 241 Wax has been objected to as a thickening agent as it settles out and the paint remover or stripper requires frequent and repeated shaking. 1949 C. H. Hayward Woodworker's Pocket Bk. 4 Many proprietary strippers are now available. 1979 C. Curzon Leaven of Malice ii. 22, I had bought..cleaning agents, strippers, filler for the cracks..in the plaster. |
▪ II. ˈstripper2
[f. strip v.3 + -er1.]
‘A cow not in calf, but giving very little milk’ (Eng. Dial. Dict.).
| 1856 Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc. XVII. i. 266 The cows which I buy as strippers, for fattening, giving little milk. 1917 L. A. Klein Princ. & Practice Milk Hygiene i. 5 Cows in which lactation is about to cease are called ‘strippers’. |
▪ III. stripper3 Oil Industry.
(ˈstrɪpə(r))
[? f. stripper2, by analogy with a low-yielding milk cow.]
More fully, stripper well. An oil well in which production has dwindled to only a few barrels a day.
| 1930 Oil & Gas Jrnl. 18 Dec. 48/2 The proration committee is working out a plan safeguarding the interest of operators owning small and shallow producing wells... Nothing will be done that might cause the abandonment of the stripper wells. 1931 Ibid. 8 Jan. 26/1 There would apparently be nothing to do but to abandon these old strippers as having exceeded their useful life. 1976 Watertown (S. Dakota) Public Opinion 6 July 7/5 Throughout the United States marginally productive oil wells known as ‘strippers’ account for more than 13 percent of domestic production. 1980 Fortune 24 Mar. 64/1 Independents will also get a break on oil from ‘stripper’ wells, which produce ten or fewer barrels a day. |