[f. FILL v. + -ER1.]
1. One who or that which fills: in various senses of the verb.
1496. Nottingham Rec., III. 291. To þe fillers þat filled grauell at Trent side.
1541. R. Copland, Guydon’s Quest. Chirurg. He ought to begyn at the cure of it that is the fyller and nouryssher of the other.
1641. H. Best, Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641 (Surtees), 59. Hee that forketh the wahie is to stande on the stacke [? waine] and forke to the stacke and fillers.
1755. Young, Centaur, Wks. 1762, IV. 197. Centre of all Good! Great Antient of days! before the birth of time! beyond the comprehension of angels! Filler of Immensity! who lookest down on the highest; and the lowest dost support!—support even me.
1816. Byron, Lett. to Moore, 5 Jan. There is no one here of the fifteen hundred fillers of hot rooms, called the fashionable world.
1886. Pall Mall G., 5 Oct., 14/1. The peaches come in large pans, and each ‘filler’ selects with a fork only the perfect halves.
b. Sc. A funnel.
1782. Sir J. Sinclair, Observ. Scot. Dial., 118. A filler, a funnel.
1847. in Craig.
2. Something used to fill a cavity, stop a gap, complete a load or charge, make bulk, etc.
1591. Greene, Disc. Coosnage (1592), 22. Laying in the mouth of the sack certaine choise coles, which they call fillers, to make the sack shew faire.
1697. Dryden, Æneid, Ded. (1709), 297. It [an epithet] is a mere filler, to stop a vacancy in the Hexameter.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Filler, a filling piece on a made mast.
1884. Pall Mall G., 17 May, 4. A cigar consists of three parts, the wrapper, the bunch, and the filler.
1885. Frederick Daniel, In an Old Virginia Town, in Harper’s Mag., LXX. March, 608/2. It consists of solid, uncarved marble blocks inclosing a ‘filler’ of cemented granite stones.
3. With adverbs, as filler-in, filler-up.
1726. Leoni, Alberti’s Archit., I. 44 b. Those parts which interfere or lie between these principal parts, are very properly call’d fillers up.
1735. Pope, Lett. to Cromwell, 17 Dec., 1710. A Mixture of tender gentle Thoughts, and suitable Expressions, of forc’d and inextricable Conceits, and of needless fillers-up to the rest.
1776. S. J. Pratt (‘Courtney Melmoth’), The Pupil of Pleasure, I. 217. Detraction is a necessary filler-up of the vacuum.
1877. N. W. Linc. Gloss., Fillers in, small stones in the inside of a rubble-wall.
4. Comb.: filler-box, a receptacle for prepared clay in a brick machine.
1884. C. T. Davis, Bricks & Tiles, v. 177. It is impossible to fill the charge-boxes, or as they are also termed, the ‘filler-boxes,’ with any degree of regularity in dry-clay machines.
