stuffer
(ˈstʌfə(r))
[f. stuff v.1 + -er1.]
1. A person who stuffs or fills; one whose trade it is to stuff (e.g.) dead animals or cushions.
| 1611 Cotgr., Embourreur, a stuffer, bumbaster, or puffer vp of things with flockes, haire, &c. 1694 Motteux Rabelais v. Prognost. v. 236 Stuffers and Bumbasters of Pack-saddles. 1862 Jukes Stud. Man. Geol. (ed. 2) 411 note, To speak of scientific men as ‘mere beetle-hunters and bird-stuffers’. 1893 W. H. Hudson Idle Days Patagonia xii. 185 In museums..the stuffer's work is endurable because useful. 1905 Daily Chron. 16 Mar. 8/7 Upholsterer.—Good stuffer wants Job. |
2. A machine or implement used for stuffing.
| 1875 Knight Dict. Mech., Stuffer, a machine for packing or filling; as, i. A machine for stuffing horse-collars. 1883 R. Haldane Workshop Rec. Ser. ii. 445/2 [The tomatoes] are fed by the ‘stuffer’, a cylinder worked by a treadle, into the cans. 1909 Teachers' Assembly Herald 13 Apr. 19/1 Other tools [for bird-stuffing]..long stuffers, bone-cutters. |
3. An advertising leaflet or similar material enclosed with other literature, esp. when sent by post.
| 1942 [see filler1 2]. 1971 Oxf. Univ. Gaz. (Ann. Rep. Delegates Univ. Press) 5 The Promotion Department had to prepare, produce, and distribute 875,000 stuffers, 550,000 prospectuses. 1972 Publishers Weekly 31 Jan. 94/3 The prices they wish printed on the mailing piece, circular, stuffer, etc. 1976 New Yorker 12 Apr. 120/3 There was a program stuffer with a word-and-picture collage printed on one side and a full chronology of Tharp choreographies on the other. |
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Add: 4. A person who smuggles drugs through Customs by concealment in a bodily passage such as the rectum or vagina. Cf. *swallower n. 1 c. colloq.
| 1983 Listener 28 July 3/3 The customs teams delicately refer to such smugglers as ‘the swallowers and stuffers’. 1986 Sunday Times 26 Oct. 3/2 Investigators at Heathrow Airport have discovered more than 100 Nigerians..attempting to smuggle heroin packed inside contraceptive sheaths, which are swallowed or inserted in anal and vaginal passages. They are known..as ‘stuffers and swallowers’. 1992 Independent 29 Sept. 13/3 ‘Stuffers’, as opposed to ‘swallowers’, will use any orifice available. |