porter
verbEtymology From Middle English porter, portere, portare, borrowed from Anglo-Norman portour and Old French portier, from Late Latin portarius (“gatekeeper”), from Latin porta (“gate”).
1
To serve as a porter; to carry.
porter
nounUS /ˈpɔɹtɚ/ · UK /ˈpɔːtə/
Etymology From Middle English porter, portere, portier, borrowed from Anglo-Norman portour and Old French porteor, from Late Latin portātor, from past participle of Latin portāre (“to carry”). By surface analysis, port (“to carry”) + -er.
1
A person who carries luggage and related objects.
- By the time I reached the train station I was exhausted, but fortunately there was a porter waiting.
- Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
4 more examples
- the unsmotherable delight of all the porters and by - standers1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC:
- The man who carries your luggage at the station is a "red cap", not a porter. The Canadian porter is the man who makes up the beds in the sleeping cars.1954 February, Trevor Holloway, “Canada's Transcontinental Routes”, in Railway Magazine, page 130:
- As soon as we had come to a stand in Kamina Station, a swarm of porters pushed their way into the compartment to get my luggage. I selected one, and ordered the others out, and then detrained.1958 February 23, Arthur F. Beckenham, “A Journey in the Belgian Congo”, in Railway Magazine, page 125:
- Tips were an important part of porters' income, and at Christmas passengers felt there was extra pressure to give them - despite some perceiving the level of service to be poor.2022 December 14, David Turner, “The Edwardian Christmas getaway...”, in RAIL, number 972, page 35:
2
Biology, Entomology, Natural sciences An ant having the specialized role of carrying.
3
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences One who ports software (makes it usable on another platform).
- […] useful only if you are a Perl porter or implementor and you want to check the efficiency of the hashing algorithm.1998, Michael McMillan, Perl from the Ground Up, page 45:
- Derived terms
- Porterfield, porterless, porterlike, porterly, portress, rope porter, symporter, teleporter, underporter, uniporter