lamplighter

English

Etymology

From lamp +‎ lighter.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈlæmpˌlaɪ.tə(ɹ)/

Noun

lamplighter (plural lamplighters)

1. (historical) A person employed to light streetlights at dusk and snuff them at dawn.
   • 1851, Henry Mayhew, “Costermongers”, in London Labour and the London Poor:

     1,000 crossing-sweepers; another thousand chimney-sweeps, and the same number of turncocks and lamp-lighters;

   • 1905, E. W. Hornung, A Thief in the Night:

     I did the hurdles over two or three garden-walls, but so did the flyer who was on my tracks, and he drove me back into the straight and down to High Street like any lamplighter.

2. (historical) Any device or contrivance for lighting lamps, such as a length of paper to be set alight at one end.
   • 1876, Ballou's Monthly Magazine, volume 44, page 590:

     […] and finally, laughing and all tired out, they stopped to rest and to think of some other game. They played “Buz” till they were rested, and then “Genteel Lady,” where every time a little girl made a mistake she had to have a lamplighter stuck in her hair.

3. A kind of tall bicycle.

Derived terms

• lamplighter group

Translations

a person employed to light streetlights

• Catalan: fanaler m, fanalera f
• German: Laternenanzünder (de)
• Hungarian: lámpagyújtogató (hu)
• Italian: lampionaio m
• Polish: latarnik (pl) m
• Ukrainian: ліхта́рник m (lixtárnyk)

References

• “lamplighter”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.