caster

English

Alternative forms

• castor (UK)

Etymology

cast +‎ -er; the wheel sense comes from obsolete cast (“to turn”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑːstə(ɹ)/, /ˈkæstə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈkæstɚ/
• Homophone: castor
• Rhymes: -æstə(ɹ), -ɑːstə(ɹ)

Noun

caster (plural casters)

1. Someone or something that casts.

   a caster of spells

   a caster of stones

   a caster of bronze statuary

   • 2016, C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Virago, page 231:

     She’s never seen a hired man without Anna to command him. He’s eerie as a shadow without its caster.

2. A wheeled assembly attached to a larger object at its base to facilitate rolling. A caster usually consists of a wheel (which may be plastic, a hard elastomer, or metal), an axle, a mounting provision (usually a stem, flange, or plate), and sometimes a swivel (which allows the caster to rotate for steering).

   Many office chairs roll on a set of casters.

   • 1980 August 30, Nancy Walker, “My Boss Comes Out”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 6, page 7:

     I have my own phone, an electric typewriter and a lovely chair with casters. The floor is carpeted, the lighting is very adequate.

3. A shaker with a perforated top for sprinkling condiments such as sugar, salt, pepper, etc.

   Synonym: cruet

   a set of casters

   • 1860 January 28 – October 13, Charles Dickens, chapter VI, in The Uncommercial Traveller, London: Chapman and Hall, , published 1861, →OCLC:

     Your waiter having settled that point, returns to array your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen casters with nothing in them; […]

   • 1910, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Girl and the Habit”, in Strictly Business‎:

     She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle’s casters.

4. A stand to hold a set of shakers or cruets.
5. (automotive) The angle of the axis around which a car's front wheels rotate when the steering wheel is turned, with a vertical axis being defined as zero caster.
   • 2008, Ronald G Haefner, The Car Care Book‎, →ISBN, page 238:

     In addition, caster helps to reduce steering effort and to return the steering wheel to the center position after a turn.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• caster angle
• caster sugar

Verb

caster (third-person singular simple present casters, present participle castering, simple past and past participle castered)

1. To act as a caster

Anagrams

• Cartes, Caters, Cestar, acters, carest, carets, cartes, caters, crates, creats, racest, reacts, recast, rescat, reäcts, traces

French

Etymology

From English cast.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kas.te/

• Audio

  (file)

• Audio

  (file)

Verb

caster

1. (transitive) to cast (a spell)
2. (transitive, film) to cast (into a role)

Conjugation

Derived terms

• précaster
• recaster