looser

Pluralloosers

1. 1
   adjective

   Comparative form of loose.

   The belt grew looser as he lost weight over the summer.

   She prefers a looser fit around the shoulders for comfort.

   Note

   Loose takes the short comparative, adding -er directly instead of building more loose, and the result carries every sense of the base with it: a looser fit, a looser grip, looser rules. The same spelling also belongs to the noun for one who frees and turns up as a slip for loser, so context alone tells the reader which word is meant.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person who unfastens, releases, or sets something free.

   The looser of the prisoners opened every cell along the corridor.

   Legend named him the looser of bonds, freeing all who were chained.

   Similarliberator, releaser, deliverer, emancipator

   Oppositecaptor, jailer

   Note

   An agent noun built from the verb loose, it now survives mainly in two specialized corners. Religious writing pairs it with binders: The Magazine of the Wesleyan Methodist Church (1844), credited to John Wesley, speaks of "clerical binders and loosers." Seamanship gives it a crew job. In Luce and Ward's Text-book of Seamanship (1884), loosers are the hands who free the topsails and courses.

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