bender
/ˈbɛndə
/noun
1An object or person that bends something: a metal bender...
- Thus, field soldiers and civilian metal and electron benders were in the driver's seat - they could literally build their own division to meet General Meyer's concept and his timelines.
- There are department-store tents of amateur watercolourists, amateur kiddie crocheters, flower dryers, mud turners, cancerous candle makers, rag-doll knotters and metal benders.
- Working with English metal benders, the professor of experimental physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, has devised extensive methods of guarding against conscious or unconscious fraud.
2 informal A wild drinking spree: he went off on a self-destructive bender...
- This could be because of a weekend drinking bender, or it's more likely because the story is tremendously forgettable.
- However, I had been on a hard drinking bender for the whole weekend.
- I guess this gives me a shoddy excuse to embark on a weeklong bender of hard drinking, dire self-examination and monstrous self-pity.
3British informal, offensive A male homosexual.
4British A shelter made by covering a framework of bent branches with canvas or tarpaulin: we lived underneath this bender we built in the woods...
- The 7 boys built and slept in a 20 foot high tepee, and the 3 girls made a bender.
- I can honestly say I've never slept in a bender, and I never intend to.
- If you've never slept in a bender, you MUST.
Origin
Late 15th century (denoting instruments such as pliers, for bending things): from bend1 + -er1.