▪ I. checker, n.1
(ˈtʃɛkə(r))
[f. check v.1 + -er1.]
One who checks.
1. A reprover, rebuker, fault-finder; a controller.
| 1535 Coverdale Bible To Rdr. ¶5 Not as a checker, not as a reprouer or despyser of other mens translacyons. 1611 Cotgr., Repreuart, a reprehender, rebuker, reprouer, carper, checker, find fault, controller. |
2. One employed to check or control the calculations, accounts, time, or work of others; esp. of collectors of money for others.
| 1867 Morn. Star 9 Sept., A ‘checker’ employed by the proprietors, and not..a passenger. 1869 Daily News 30 Oct., Another porter..who told his checker what he had seen. 1883 Ibid. 10 Oct. 7/1 A checker in the grocery department of the Army and Navy Co-operative Stores. |
3. A person who or a thing which checks, impedes, or retards.
| 1845 Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc. VI. ii. 548 Checkers or curers of the disease. |
▪ II. checker, n.2
(ˈtʃɛkə(r))
Also 8 checkard, -erd.
1. A frequent variant spelling of chequer, q.v., in all senses; esp. in U.S.
2. a. spec. in pl. The game of Draughts. (U.S.)
| 1712 Sewall Letter-Bk. (1886) I. 417 You us'd to Huff him, and humble him at a game of Checkers. 1794 A. Ellicott in C. V. Mathews Life & Lett. (1908) 119 We amuse ourselves with playing checkerds. 1825 Bro. Jonathan I. 385 They think I go there to play checkers with him. 1888 Amer. Humorist 5 May 8/1 In the Social Hall are checkers, chess, dominoes. |
b. One of the ‘men’ used in Draughts.
| 1864 in Webster. 1870 Emerson Soc. & Solit. vi. 88 Out of blocks, thread-spools, cards, and checkers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. |
c. Comb. as checker-board, a chess- or draught-board; checker-man = 2 b.
| 1779 Forrest Voy. N. Guinea 245 They played much at a kind of checker board with glass beads flat on one side. 1883 Harper's Mag. Jan. 278/2 He had built up a little tower of checkermen. Ibid. 280/2 [It] made a mouse-trap from a checker-board. |
3. pl. (dial.) Pebbles; = check-stones.
| 1877 E. Peacock N.W. Linc. Gloss. (E.D.S.) Checkers, small stones, pebbles. 1877 Holderness Gloss., Chequers, pebbles..They were used in the ancient game of merrils or nine men's morris, in place of the modern pegs, and were moved on the board so as to check the advance of those of the opposite side. |
Hence ˈcheckery a. dial., pebble-like: ‘checkery-bits, small lumps of coal’ (N.W. Linc. Gloss.).
▪ III. checker, v.
see the other spelling chequer.