basher

bash +‎ -er

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbæʃɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbæʃə/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æʃə(ɹ)

basher (plural bashers)

1. One who bashes something, figuratively or literally.
   • 1967, J. A. Baker, The Peregrine, page 14:

     Consider the cold-eyed thrush, that springy carnivore of lawns, worm stabber, basher to death of snails.

2. (informal) One who engages in gratuitous physical or verbal attacks on a group or type of people.

   a Paki-basher

   He was beaten up by a queer-basher.

3. (UK, slang) A trainspotter.
   • 2015, Nicholas Whittaker, Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as 20th-Century Hero:

     Nose around any modest-sized station and the odds are you'll find that the chargeman's office doubles as a bashers' club, a place where shivering spotters can get warm and catch up on the gen.

   • 2017, Ian Carter, British railway enthusiasm, page 102:

     Determined 'bashers' do still ride trains, of course, seeking to cram the largest number of route-miles into 24 hours.

4. (military, slang) A rainproof sheet for sleeping under.
   • 2014, LA Clarke, Callsign Whiskey, page 24:

     Suddenly awake she looked around, startled, it was light, hot, intensely hot and she was sleeping in a shell scrape under a basher.

   • 2018, John-Paul Jordan, Joys of War:

     I was well used to sleeping out under the stars whatever the weather. I had a hammock and a basher, a rain sheet to go over where I was sleeping.

5. (slang) A shelter built from improvised materials by a homeless person.
6. (television, film) A kind of small floodlight.

• (homeless shelter): Tony Thorne (2014), “basher”, in Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, 4th edition, London; […]: Bloombury

• Absher, Baehrs, Behars, rehabs