leveler

Plurallevelers

1. 1
   making flatnouncountable

   A person or thing that levels something, such as a tool for making ground flat or a foot that keeps furniture steady.

   Turn the levelers under the bookcase until the shelves sit perfectly straight.

   The road crew ran a leveler over the gravel before the asphalt went down.

   Note

   This is the literal sense, built plainly from level + -er, and the picture behind the others. In a field it is the tool that flattens soil before sowing; under a table or bookcase it is the adjustable foot built into each leg, so it often comes in the plural. When death or a card table is called a great leveler, it is doing to people what this one does to ground.

2. 2
   makes all equalnouncountable

   Something that overrides differences between people, such as class or wealth, and tends to cancel out their advantages and disadvantages.

   Public libraries have long served as a social leveler, open to anyone with a card.

   On the trail, mud and blisters proved a great leveler between the executives and the interns.

   Similarequalizer

   Note

   This figurative sense usually travels with an adjective in front: a great leveler, a social leveler, a universal leveler. What does the leveling can be humble or grand: Elizabeth Griffith's card table, which puts the timid on a par with the overbearing, or a national army that mixes a country's classes. The grandest is death, the leveler of Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, at whose approach a laborer offers his hand to the Squire.

3. 3
   equality campaignernouncountable

   A person whose political views favor removing the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

   Critics dismissed the young senator as a leveler bent on redistributing wealth.

   Levelers in the army demanded that rank and property count for nothing in the new order.

   Similaregalitarian

   Note

   This political label has a capitalized past. Goldsmith's History of England, in its chapters on Charles I, describes the Levelers as a set of men who grew up among the Independents and disallowed all subordination whatsoever. Written lowercase, the word carries that rejection of rank over to anyone who wants the gap between rich and poor closed.

4. 4
   tying goalnounUKcountable

   In sports, a goal or score that brings a team level with its opponent.

   With ten minutes left, the substitute headed in a leveler off a corner kick.

   Chasing a leveler, the coach sent on two extra forwards.

   Similarequalizer

   Note

   Match reports are where this one lives, and equalizer is its common twin. Teams press for a leveler or chase one, and a late one matters most in a knockout tie, where it can force the game into penalties. Since it is a goal or score, it pairs with verbs of scoring: a player heads in, grabs or snatches the leveler.

5. 5
   more evenadjective

   Comparative form of level.

   The patio turned out leveler than the contractor had promised.

   We shimmed the legs until the workbench stood leveler against the wall.

   Note

   American spelling keeps the l single when -er is added, so level becomes leveler, while British writing doubles it to leveller. The same doubled British form also covers the noun for something that levels, so one spelling serves an adjective and a noun on either side of the Atlantic. The comparative works in ordinary phrases like leveler than, though more level says the same thing.

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