Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who is employed to feed fuel to and tend a furnace, as on a steam locomotive or a steamship.
  • noun A mechanical device for feeding coal to a furnace.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who attends to and maintains suitable combustion in a furnace, especially a furnace used in generating steam, as on a locomotive or steamship; a fireman.
  • noun A poker.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who is employed to tend a furnace and supply it with fuel, especially the furnace of a locomotive or of a marine steam boiler; also, a machine for feeding fuel to a fire.
  • noun rare A fire poker.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person who stokes, especially one on a steamship who stokes coal in the boilers
  • noun A device for stoking a fire; a poker
  • noun A device that feeds coal into a furnace etc automatically
  • noun A person who pedals on the back of a tandem bicycle

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Irish writer of the horror novel about Dracula (1847-1912)
  • noun a laborer who tends fires (as on a coal-fired train or steamship)
  • noun a mechanical device for stoking a furnace

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Dutch, from stoken, to stoke, from Middle Dutch stōken, to poke.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle Dutch stoker ("stoker"), from Middle Dutch stoken ("to stoke, incite", literally "to poke, jab, thrust"), ultimately equivalent to stoke +‎ -er. More at stoke.

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Examples

  • (I cannot see why one should be called stoker and the other fireman, for they both have to keep the fire going and the steam up).

    The Stoker's Catechism W. J. Connor

  • One stoker called another stoker a weird name, and the latter, righteously inflamed at it, smote his mate with an iron shovel, and the man fell headlong over a heap of coal which crashed gently, while piece after piece rattled down upon the deck.

    Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventure. 1897

  • Our driver and fireman ( "stoker," perhaps you call the latter) are very great men.

    Little Folks A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) Various

  • At the same time as the monster a man in a blue blouse and with a brandy-nose had come to the farm; he called himself "stoker," and distinguished himself by constantly eating onions; he said that this was good for the digestion.

    Dame Care Hermann Sudermann 1892

  • The ensuing violence results in an intervention by the National Guard and the dispatching by the NAACP of Golden Frinks (Afemo Omilami), a self-described "stoker" who organizes a peaceful march to the governor's office 50 miles away in which thousands eventually join.

    BN - Broadcast Newsroom-news 2010

  • The ensuing violence results in an intervention by the National Guard and the dispatching by the NAACP of Golden Frinks (Afemo Omilami), a self-described "stoker" who organizes a peaceful march to the governor's office 50 miles away in which thousands eventually join.

    Latest News - Yahoo!7 News 2010

  • Five Best Werewolf Movies of All Time anne rice, bram stoker, dracula, interview with a vampire, lost boys, nosferatu, underworld, vampires

    Best Vampire Movies of All Time | myFiveBest 2009

  • Handsome young Dickie Attenbrough plays a claustrophobic stoker.

    My God, It's Full Of Tweets! 2009

  • Best Vampire Movies of All Time bram stoker, dracula, dracula: dead and loving it, george hamilton, gerard butler, jack palance, leslie nielsen, mel brooks, rutgar hauer

    Five Odd Actors To Play Dracula | myFiveBest 2010

  • The plot, pure hokum, revolves around a whirlwind waterfront romance between Bill Roberts (Bancroft again), an independent-minded stoker, and Mae (Betty Compson), the ostensibly weak woman he just rescued from suicide.

    Master of the Mise-en-Scène David Mermelstein 2011

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