lighter

Plurallighters

Formslighters, lightering, lightered

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A device for producing a flame, especially a small reusable handheld one used to light cigarettes.

   The cheap plastic lighter ran out of fuel halfway through the trip.

   Smokers often keep a lighter tucked into a coat pocket.

2. 2
   adjective

   Comparative form of light.

   Choose a lighter shade of blue for the bedroom walls.

   By June the evenings stay lighter for much longer.

   Note

   One spelling serves as two comparatives. Lighter belongs both to light "pale, bright" and to light "not heavy," which have separate origins. A lighter shade and a lighter suitcase share nothing but the letters, and a lighter jacket can mean either, so context has to settle it. On the color side it can even describe coffee, since light also covers coffee served with extra milk or cream.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A flat-bottomed boat for carrying heavy loads over short distances, especially on canals or to load and unload larger vessels.

   A lighter ferried coal across the harbor to the waiting steamship.

   Each lighter could hold several tons of cargo at a time.

   Similarbarge

   Note

   The boat is named for what it does to the bigger ship. Middle English lightere comes from light "to unload, lighten," so a lighter is a craft that takes weight off a vessel. Frisian, Dutch and Middle Low German use the same word for the same boat. Freight is worked "to or from lighters," and T. F. Cameron, writing in Railway Magazine in 1945, calls this loading over a ship's side "overside work."

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A person who lights things, such as lamps, fires, or fuses.

   Before electric streetlights, every district employed a lighter to ignite the gas lamps.

   The chapel's lighter lit the rows of candles before the service began.

   Note

   An agent noun built on light in the sense "to ignite," usually followed by of: a lighter of lamps, a lighter of fires. Its Dutch relatives moved toward objects, with lichter and luchter meaning a candle-holder or chandelier, much as English moved on to the handheld device. Keep it apart from the boat. That lighter comes from a different verb, light "to unload."

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To ferry goods or people out to a ship, or off it, in a lighter or similar small craft.

   Crews lighter the cargo from the anchored freighter to the pier.

   The port authority decided to lighter the goods ashore in stages.

   Similarferry, transfer

   Note

   The verb is made from the boat and inflects regularly: lightered, lightering. It often appears in the passive, with the cargo or people as subject. The 1900 Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the War Department in the War with Spain records that troops and stores "were lightered to the wharves inside the harbor." With this verb, the object is what moves, not the ship.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To transfer cargo or fuel off a ship, lightening it to reduce its draft or make it easier to refloat.

   The team began to lighter the freighter so it could clear the sandbar.

   Tugs arrived to lighter the cargo ship after it ran aground.

   Similarunload, lighten, offload

   Oppositeload

   Note

   Here the ship itself is the object: you lighter a freighter, not its cargo. That is what separates this use from the cargo-moving verb. It keeps the older meaning of light, "to unload, lighten," which gave the boat its name. It belongs to salvage and shallow water: a grounded vessel is lightered to refloat it, and a loaded one is lightered to clear a bar.

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