doffer

From doff + -er.

doffer (plural doffers)

1. (textile manufacturing) In a carding machine, a device such as a revolving cylinder or a vibrating bar with teeth, that doffs, that is to say strips off, the carded cotton or other fiber from the cards; or a hand tool for the same function in smaller machines or in manual carding.
2. A worker who replaces full bobbins by empty ones on the throstle or ring frames. The job was often done by children.
   • 1907, Margaret McMillan, Labour and Childhood, The Child-Hand To-Day:

     It has more varied exercises too than has the hand of the child who enters a mill. For though a doffer or factory child does use his hand all day long, it is but a very small group of muscles that is brought into activity.

• doffer shaft
• ring doffer

• doffing comb

• “doffer”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• fforde, offer'd, offred

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɔ.fər/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: dof‧fer
• Rhymes: -ɔfər

From Middle Dutch duvers, duve (“dove, pigeon”).

doffer m (plural doffers, diminutive doffertje n, feminine duif or duivin)

1. male dove, a cock pigeon

   Synonyms: duiver, mannetjesduif

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

doffer

1. comparative degree of dof