Noun: coaster
| Singular | coaster |
| Plural | coasters |
Sample Sentences
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People said, "Eldridge. Of course, he's an old Coaster," and Eldridge, the middle-aged shipping agent, at the beginning of every meal would say, "Chop, as we call it on the Coast," or handing a plate of onions, "Violets, we say on the Coast." [1936, Graham Greene, “The Cargo Ship”, in Journey Without Maps, 1st US edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Company, →OCLC, part 1, page 27:]
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Thus, with ſhort Plummets Heav'ns deep will we ſound, / That vaſt Abyſs where humane Wit is drown'd! / In our ſmall Skiff we muſt not launce too far; / We here but Coaſters, not Diſcov'rers are. [1669 June (first performance), John Dryden, Tyrannick Love, or, The Royal Martyr. […], London: […] H[enry] Herringman, […], published 1670, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 43:]
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If you question a seaman on the subject, whether mere coaster or circumnavigator, he will tell you that in a snow-storm, because of its constant eddyings and gyrations, frequent trimming of sails is more necessary than in any other gale, and that to steer a straight and steady course under such circumstances is for the time simply impossible. [1881 April, “Snow Storm Gales”, in Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine, volume XVI, number CLXXXIII, London: Edward Stanford, […], →OCLC, page 59:]
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His father was skipper of a small coaster, from Bristol, and dying, left him, when quite young, to the care of his mother, by whose exertions he received a common-school education, passing his winters in school and his summers in the coasting trade, until his seventeenth year, when he left home to go upon foreign voyages. [1840, R[ichard] H[enry] D[ana], Jr., chapter XXIII, in Two Years before the Mast. […] (Harper’s Family Library; no. CVI), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers […], →OCLC, page 245:]
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The single line to Exmouth Docks curves round the back of the goods yard. […] The docks can handle vessels of up to 700 tons; on the day of my visit an English coaster was discharging coal and a Dutch coaster arrived with a cargo of wood pulp from Sweden. [1960 May, R. C. Riley, “The Coastal Branches of South-East Devon: Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, London: Ian Allan Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 298:]
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Overhead, the black flag with the white skull-and-crossbones symbolizing defiance of radio regulations fluttered limply atop the two-hundred-foot mast mounted on the converted coaster from which they operated. [1969, John Brunner, chapter IX, in Double, Double, London: Gateway, Hachette, published 2011, →ISBN:]
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The ranch's rangy coasters, the only saleable cattle they then held, could not compete with cattle from a growing number of Midwest farmer-feeders or with competitors stocking the northern ranges. [2020, Michael M. Miller, XIT: A Story of Land, Cattle, and Capital in Texas and Montana, page 119:]
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2021, Ernest Haycox, Karl May, Zane Grey, 50 Westerns
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But our market required a better quality than coasters and Mexican cattle, and we turned back up the country.
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Don't tell me you've never heard of Shanghai Lily! Everybody in China knows her. She is a notorious coaster. [1932, Jules Furthman, Shanghai Express:]
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I think you can say this much, that from these traces of callus I'd venture she was once a ballet dancer—and later got her living otherwise—as a coaster perhaps. [1932, [Francis] Van Wyck Mason, The Branded Spy Murders, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC, page 65:]
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Gently again, he raised his hand to tap on the smooth white panels of the coaster’s door, but once more his interview with Ruby Braunfeld was postponed. [1933, [Francis] Van Wyck Mason, The Shanghai Bund Murders, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC, page 51:]
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Once engaged to be married, Lily and Doc [in the film Shanghai Express (1932)] have been separated for more than five years because of Doc's jealous reaction to a ploy Lily had used to test his love. They meet, by chance, on the Shanghai Express. Lily has become a "coaster", a vamp who travels along the China coast looking for men to victimize, and Doc has thrown himself into his work as a British medical officer. [1993, Gina Marchetti, “The Threat of Captivity: The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Shanghai Express”, in Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Romance, Berkeley; Los Angeles, Calif.; London: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 59:]
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I have studied your astrological chart and it fills me with more concern than hatred. If you stay in China, I fear you will end up a coaster. [2000, Charles Busch, Shanghai Moon: A Comic Melodrama, New York, N.Y.; London: Samuel French, →ISBN:]
Nouns inflected like coaster
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From coast (“edge of the land where it meets an ocean, sea, gulf, bay, or large lake”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns). Coast is derived from Middle English coste (“rib; side of the body, flank; side of a building; face of a solid figure; coast, shore; bay, gulf; sea; concavity, hollow; boundary, limit; land; country; district, province, region; locality, place; division of the heavens; compass direction; direction; location with reference to direction, side”) [and other forms], from Old French coste (“rib; side of an object; coast”) (modern French côte (“rib; coast; hill, slope”)), from Latin costa (“rib; side, wall”). See: Middle English Nouns '
coste', French Nouns '
côte', Latin Nouns '
costa'.
Verbs referencing "coaster"
Spanish Nouns
coaster.