The growler
- One that growls.
- A container brought by a customer to fetch beer.
- Small iceberg pieces less than 5 meters at the waterline get their name from the sound they make when they plunge down into the water when oscillating in sea swells.
- A four-wheeled cab.
- An electromagnetic device for testing short-circuited coils.
If five isn’t enough for you, here are some informal definitions sent by readers of the Word A Day newsletter:
- A student who can’t sing in tune.
- The sound box put inside “talking bears.”
- A Victorian-era slang word for a sausage (at least so says James P. Blaylock in his novel Homonculus)
- A slang term for a pork pie (in Yorkshire, in the North of England).
- A very large clam (at least it is in Phillip Craig’s mystery series set on Martha’s Vineyard (an island off the coast of Massachusetts)).
- A station to station telephone that employs a small hand crank to produce a growling noise at the called station (US Navy).
- A large-mouthed black bass.
- A diesel locomotive.
- Translucent messages and icons that appear on a computer screen for a short time.
- Pre-fabricated burgers once served at the student cafeteria at Memorial University of Newfoundland; for their obvious effect once ingested.
- A heavy, fast food meat pie in Northern England that can cause quite severe indigestion.
- Portable electric toilets used by wilderness guides in areas such as the Grand Canyon.
- A slang meaning I’ve often heard for this word is ‘outhouse’. Also portable toilets.
- A bathroom.
