piecer
(ˈpiːsə(r))
[f. piece v. + -er1.]
1. generally. One who pieces; a patcher.
| 1836 L. Hunt in New Monthly Mag. XLVIII. 70 Fancy's the wealth of wealth, the toiler's hope, The poor man's piecer-out. 1841 Blackw. Mag. L. 155 The English are blunderers here, piecers and patch-workers. 1858 Gladstone Homer I. 46 The piecers, who say that there were originally a number of Iliadic or Odyssean songs, afterwards made up into the poems such as we now have them. |
2. spec. In a spinning-mill: see piecener.
| 1825 J. Nicholson Operat. Mechanic 384 The pieces are joined by children, called piecers, who are in attendance on each mule, to join any yarn that may be broken in the act of stretching or twisting. 1833 H. Martineau Manch. Strike i. 3 You earn as much as a piecer as some do at a hand-loom. 1857 Livingstone Trav. Introd. 3, I was put into the factory as a ‘piecer’. 1891 Labour Commission Gloss., Piecers, assistants to the mule spinner or minder, with the special duty of keeping the frames filled with ‘rovings’. They derive their name from their work of piecing up the broken threads. |