fitter

Pluralfitters

1. 1
   adjective

   Comparative of fit.

   Athletes who cross-train often stay fitter than those who only run.

   Regular swimmers tend to be fitter than people who avoid exercise.

   Note

   The final t doubles before -er, as it does in fittest. Every sense of the adjective can take this comparative, not only the athletic one. An exercise bike makes you fitter in body. In British slang, someone can be loads fitter, meaning better-looking. Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) uses "for a charnel-dungeon fitter" to mean more suitable for one.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person who fits or assembles parts, or installs and adjusts equipment.

   Each fitter on the line attaches the doors to the car frames.

   The pipe fitter checked every joint before turning on the water supply.

   Similarassembler, installer, mechanic

   Note

   An agent noun built on the verb fit, much as baker is built on bake: the person who makes parts fit together. In engineering it names a skilled trade. M. J. Wilson's 1962 account of a railway depot shows its fitters struggling with complex new diesels after years of simple steam locomotives. The same spelling belongs to the comparative "more fit", a separate word formed from the adjective plus -er.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A person who has epilepsy or is prone to seizures.

   The asylum staff watched the fitter closely during the night shift.

   As a young fitter, he carried medicine wherever he traveled.

   Similarepileptic

4. 4
   nounhistoricalcountable

   In the silent-film era, a person whose job was selecting appropriate musical accompaniment for each film.

   The studio's fitter matched a tender melody to the love scene.

   For the fitter of film music in the silent era visual reference was the surest indicator of content.

   2012, Stephen Neale, The Classical Hollywood Reader

   Note

   The job lasted only as long as films were silent, so the word now belongs to film history. The work was matching moods to images. Stephen Neale's The Classical Hollywood Reader (2012) observes that for the fitter of film music, what appeared on screen was the surest guide to content. The fuller phrase fitter of film music shows the pattern of the assembler's sense extended from machine parts to sound.

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