[f. STRIP v.1 + -ER1.]
1. One who strips another; also one who strips or strips off some article or product, e.g., bark of a tree, tobacco, the accumulation of shoddy in a carding-machine.
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, xxxvii. (1887), 162. Preferment to degrees in schole … ought to be a mightier stripper of insufficiencie.
1611. Cotgr., Spoliateur, a spoyler; stripper, despoyler.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 367. The greater the flush of sap … it makes the better bark, and is better both for the tanner and the stripper.
1859. Fairholt, Tobacco, vi. 305. The ‘stripper’ performs her duties by folding the tobacco-leaf, and … cutting under both sides of the thick end of the stalk.
1876. Smiles, Sc. Naturalist, iii. 48. Each spinner had three boys under him—the wheeler, the pointer, and the stripper.
1886. Ld. Walsingham & Payne-Gallwey, Shooting, I. 71. The stripper takes the gun to pieces down to the minutest detail, and carefully examines and regulates it in every way.
1890. Melbourne Argus, 10 June, 5/2. Had strippers been allowed to take out licenses to strip the wattles of their bark.
2. A machine or appliance for stripping.
1835. [see STRIP v. 20].
1856. P. Kennedy, Banks of Boro, xli. (1867), 339. A … pair of strippers (curved chisels for stripping off bark).
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., 842/2. A frame … which may be elevated to raise the stripper off the file through the instrumentality of a rock-shaft and a system of levers. Ibid. (1875), 2430/2. Stripper 2. (Carding) a device for lifting the top flats from the carding-cylinder.
1882. Essex Herald, No. 4269/3. A stripper is a labour saving machine used in … Victoria…. Its object is to strip the heads from the standing corn and thrash them at one operation.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 6 April, 14/2. One by one the [willow-] switches are placed in the mechanical stripper.
attrib. 1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 349. [Carding] This shaft drives the crank and lever mechanism of the stripper knife.
1908. Westm. Gaz., 12 March, 2/1. Sir William Lyne proposed to raise the duty from £12 10 £16 for ‘stripper harvesters.’
3. pl. Gaming. ‘High cards cut wedge-shape, a little wider than the rest, so as to be easily drawn in a crooked game’ (Farmer & Henley).
1887. F. Francis, Jr. Saddle & Mocassin, 228. A tender-foot got in amongst the gamblers on board…, and what with ‘strippers,’ and ‘stocking,’ and ‘cold decks,’… and so forth, he hadn’t the ghost of a show.
1894. Maskelyne, Sharps & Flats, 222. The most commonly used form of cards, however, is that of the ‘double-wedges’ or ‘strippers.’
