stringer
Americannoun
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a person or thing that strings.
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a long horizontal timber connecting upright posts.
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Architecture. string.
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Civil Engineering. a longitudinal bridge girder for supporting part of a deck or railroad track between bents or piers.
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a longitudinal reinforcement in the fuselage or wing of an airplane.
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Also called string correspondent. Journalism. a part-time newspaper correspondent covering a local area for a paper published elsewhere.
The Los Angeles paper has a correspondent in San Francisco but only a stringer in Seattle.
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a stout string, rope, etc., strung through the gills and mouth of newly caught fish, so that they may be carried or put back in the water to keep them alive or fresh.
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a contestant, player, or other person ranked according to skill or accomplishment (used in combination).
Most of the conductors at the opera house were third-stringers.
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Mining. a small vein or seam of ore, coal, etc.
noun
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architect
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a long horizontal beam that is used for structural purposes
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another name for stringboard
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nautical a longitudinal structural brace for strengthening the hull of a vessel
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a journalist retained by a newspaper or news service on a part-time basis to cover a particular town or area
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of stringer
late Middle English word dating back to 1375–1425; see origin at string, -er 1
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.
She started her career as a stringer for the Chicago Tribune, covering local government in the city’s northern suburbs during the 2009 recession.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 2, 2026
Video from the stringer service OnScene.TV shows a stalled pickup truck on the shoulder of the freeway with a gaping hole in the windshield.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 21, 2025
Chandrakar used to also work as a "stringer" for news organisations, where his job involved providing outstation journalists with information about a story or sometimes, even chaperoning them through Maoist strongholds.
From BBC • Jan. 8, 2025
As a high school junior, he signed on as a stringer, feeding varsity wrestling and hockey results to the paper’s sports department.
From New York Times • Jan. 12, 2024
Though the Crepuscule was armed with but sixteen guns, the noise of their detonation was great, and as we labored to stand in the darkness, cannon blasts quaked the whole ship from strake to stringer.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
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.
