TRENCHER • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Trencher

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/trˈɛntʃər/ Listen

noun

Trencher n.

One who trenches; esp., one who cuts or digs ditches.

A large wooden plate or platter, as for table use.

The table; hence, the pleasures of the table; food. "It could be no ordinary declension of nature that could bring some men, after an ingenuous education, to place their "summum bonum" upon their trenchers."

Trencher cap, the cap worn by studens at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, having a stiff, flat, square appendage at top. A similar cap used in the United States is called Oxford cap, mortar board, etc.

Trencher fly, a person who haunts the tables of others; a parasite. (R.)

Trencher friend, one who frequents the tables of others; a sponger.

Trencher mate, a table companion; a parasite; a trencher fly.

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Etymology of 'Trencher'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Trencher" Quotes from Famous Books

... expectation one is not disappointed. There are two other species of cowbirds in the Argentine country—the screaming cowbird (Molothrus rufoaxillaris) and the bay-winged cowbird (Molothrus badius). The latter is only partly a trencher on the rights of other birds—only half a parasite. Indeed, it sometimes builds its own nest, which is quite a respectable affair; but, as if to prove that it still has some remnants of cowbird depravity in its nature, it frequently drives other birds from their rightful possessions, appropriates ...

— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... the mantel-piece he was represented in a hunting costume, on his favorite horse; there was a sticking-plaster silhouette of him in the widow's bedroom, and a miniature in the drawing-room, where he was drawn in a gown of black and gold, holding a gold-tasselled trencher cap with one hand, and with the other pointing to a diagram of Pons Asinorum. This likeness was taken when he was a fellow-commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, and before the growth of that blue beard which was the ornament of his manhood, and a part ...

— Stories of Comedy • Various

... which primitive dainty he has so gallantly defended against the disparaging sneers of Dr. Johnson and his bear-leader.[109] A huge brown loaf flanked his elbow, and it was placed upon a broad wooden trencher, that he might cut and come again with the bolder knife. Often did the Clerks' {p.252} coach, commonly called among themselves the Lively—which trundled round every morning to pick up the brotherhood, and then deposited them at the proper minute in the Parliament ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable to a thing or class of things, of which, or of the ...

— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... mattress too. It is really less like a bed than a damp and nasty little pond. No wonder the prisoner does not choose to lie there. But then, why not move the bed somewhere else? And what is that round thing like a platter in his hand, and what is he doing with it? Is he playing 'Turn the Trencher' ...

— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

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