stringer

Noun

1. Someone who threads something; one who makes or provides strings, especially for bows.
   • Be content to put your trust in honest stringers. - 1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus:
2. Someone who strings someone along.
3. A horizontal timber that supports upright posts, or supports the hull of a vessel.
   • A startled man looked out the office window and then rushed for the door, but the boys were too quick for him. They were lying behind a wooden stringer in the lot before he even got near the door. - 1945, John...
4. The side rail supporting the rungs of a ladder or the steps of a flight of stairs.

   Synonyms: stile rail

5. A small screw-hook to which piano strings are sometimes attached.
6. A freelance correspondent not on the regular newspaper staff, especially one retained on a part-time basis to report on events in a particular place.
   • And he told a few stories about time he had spent in New York in the 1950s as a stringer for the Asahi newspapers… about meeting Diana Vreeland and Truman Capote and Judy Holiday. - 1991, Douglas Coupland, “Enter...
7. A person who plays on a particular string.
8. Wooden strip running lengthwise down the centre of a surfboard, for strength.
9. A hard-hit ball.
10. A cord or chain, sometimes with additional loops, that is threaded through the mouth and gills of caught fish.
    • "Okay, that's a keeper," Harold said as he netted the 3-pounder and put him on a stringer over the side of the boat. - 1970, Field & Stream, volume 75, number 7, page 76:
11. A pallet or skid used when shipping less than truckload (LTL) freight. A platform typically constructed of timber or plastic designed such that freight may be stacked on top, able to be lifted by a forklift.
12. A libertine; a wencher.
    • A whoreson tyrant! He has been an old stringer in's days - 1607 (first performance), Francis Beaumont, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for...