noun
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a boat or ship driven by steam engines
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Also called: steam box. an apparatus for steaming wooden beams and planks to make them pliable for shipbuilding
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a vessel used to cook food by steam
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slang a clash of sporting teams characterized by rough play
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of steamer
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
With little formal education, Mulholland had left his native Ireland in his teens, worked steamer ships on the Great Lakes, labored in lumber camps and prospected for gold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
These are foam or gel-filled toys of various brands shaped like bao buns, and sometimes sold in plastic replicas of bamboo steamer baskets.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
And when I was cooking an egg dish from an Instagram video recipe, the “Live” voice mode showed me how to make it without a steamer basket, no typing necessary.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2025
When they served their first steamer of dim sum in 1933, a refined ambiance drew the elite clientele of the era.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2025
When I was sick with the mumps, once in the winter, my mother found one at the bottom of her steamer trunk.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
Portable steamers are cheap and easy to use.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
The market also offers workshops to make shower steamers and toilet cleaning tabs in partnership with Seattle Zero Waste.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 17, 2023
For the past 20 years she has instead worked maintaining electrical items, such as water purifiers and clothes steamers, in people's homes.
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2022
Posters advertising the sales showed steamers merrily plying the imagined waters of the river.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2022
He had five steamers at the scene now, plus three hose carts and a hook-and-ladder wagon, all of them pumping water into the fire at various locations.
From "The Great Fire" by Jim Murphy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
