crapper

Pluralcrappers

1. 1
   nounslangmildly vulgarcountable

   A toilet, including an outhouse or a chamber pot; in dated use, especially a flush toilet made by Thomas Crapper.

   The cabin had no plumbing, just a crapper out back behind the woodpile.

   He spent half the morning on the crapper with the sports pages.

   Similartoilet, john, can, bog

   Note

   The everyday slang name for the toilet, and a mildly vulgar one: it belongs among friends, not on a sign or in polite company. The word is simply crap plus -er rather than Thomas Crapper's name, though barracks fitted with his plumbing during the First World War may have helped bring it back into wide use. His surname is unrelated, a dialect form of cropper, "farmer".

2. 2
   adjectivecolloquial

   Comparative of crap.

   Each season of the show felt crapper than the last.

   The hotel turned out to be a lot crapper than the photos suggested.

   Note

   The slang adjective for poor quality takes the ordinary -er ending, so the comparative means roughly "worse", and more crap says the same thing. It keeps the adjective's mild vulgarity. The spelling collides with the slang word for a toilet; a following than, or a linking verb such as be or get before it, shows that the adjective is meant.

3. 3
   nounslangderogatoryvulgarcountable

   A scornful, often vulgar name for a rapper or other performer of rap music.

   Another crapper mumbling rhymes over a drum machine topped the charts this week.

   The old rock fans dismissed the festival's rap acts as a bunch of crappers.

   Note

   A put-down packed into one word: a blend of crap and rapper that declares rap music itself worthless. It insults the performer it names even in casual talk, and it is often vulgar, so it signals the speaker's contempt rather than describing anyone. Neutral speech and writing say rapper; this word belongs to quoted abuse or open scorn.

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