Also 4–6 brenner, -ar, 6 borner. [f. BURN v.1 + -ER1.]
1. One who burns, or consumes with fire.
c. 1380. Wyclif, Sel. Wks., III. 329. Alle brenneris of houses and cornes ben cursed opynly in parische chirches.
1502. Arnolde, Chron., 176. Brenners of houses & chirches.
1563. Homilies, II. Wilful Rebell., I. (1859), 558. The burners of their villages.
1702. C. Mather, Magn. Chr., VII. vi. (1852), 569. Weymouth also suffered from these burners no little damage.
1871. Morley, Voltaire (1886), 14. The burner of books and the tormentor of those who wrote them.
b. fig.
1872. Spurgeon, Treas. Dav., Ps. lix. 12. Persecutors in talk, burners and stabbers with the tongue.
2. One who prepares or produces by burning. Chiefly in comb., as brick-, charcoal-, lime-burner.
1463. Mann. & Househ. Exp. (1790), 154. To pay to a lyme brenner ffor lyme vis. viiid.
c. 1500. Cocke Lorell’s B. (1843), 10. Parys plasterers, daubers, and lyme borners.
1562. Act 5 Eliz., iv. § 30. The Art or Occupation of a … Lime burner, Brickmaker … Burner of Oare and Wood-Ashes.
1703. Arts Improv., p. xiv. Our English Statute Laws yet in force, for the regulating of the Trades, of Brick-Burners, [etc.].
1825. J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, II. 71. I mistook them at first for charcoal-burners.
1874. Linc. Chron., 4 Dec., in Peacock, N. W. Linc. Gloss. (E. D. S.). To brickyard hands: wanted two steady men as burners.
3. A vessel to hold something that is burning.
1856. T. Hook, G. Gurney, I. vi. 328 (L.). To put three or four of the pastilles … into a burner on the chimney-piece.
4. That part of an illuminating apparatus from which the flame comes; in a lamp the wick-holder; in a gas-light the part containing the hole or holes through which the gas passes before combustion. Often with defining words, as Argand, batwing, Bunsen, cockspur, fish-tail burner.
1790. Roy, in Phil. Trans., LXXX. 162. A simple Argand’s burner.
1808. Murdoch, in Phil. Trans., XCVIII. 125. The burners … are connected with the mains, by short tubes.
1828. Miss Mitford, Village (1863), 113. The luminary … had four burners, which never … were all in action together.
1886. S. G. W. Benjamin, in Harper’s Mag., LXXII. 463/2. From the centre of the dome a large chandelier was suspended, furnished with four electric burners—a recent innovation.
