[f. LAMP sb.1 + LIGHTER.]
1. One who lights lamps; one whose business it is to light the street lamps.
Like a lamplighter: said with allusion to the rapidity with which the lamplighter ran on his rounds, or climbed the ladders formerly used to reach the street lamps.
1750. Baker, in Phil. Trans., XLVI. 601. A Lamp-lighter was giving an Account, that [etc.].
1776. Court & City Reg., 167/2. John Bird, master lamp lighter.
a. 1813. A. Wilson, Hogmenae, Poet. Wks. (1846), 293. So Dempster, and Brodie, in Co., Like lamplighters ran to the baker’s.
1830. Marryat, King’s Own, xxxiii. Skim up the rigging like a lamplighter.
1843. Bethune, Scott. Peasant’s Fire-side, 68. That’s Lucifer, flying about like a lamplighter.
1874. Burnand, My Time, ii. 12. The arrival of the lamplighter in the winter-time was quite the event of the day.
2. U.S. A contrivance for lighting lamps; e.g., a spill of paper, a torch, or an electric appliance.
1859. Emily Dickinson, Lett. (1894), I. 194. Please, now I write so often, make lamplighter of me.
3. local U.S. The calico bass.
In recent (American) Dicts.
