bolter
More pronunciations (2)Fewer pronunciations
England/ˈbɒltə/Scotland/ˈboltəɹ/
bolter noun: a person or thing that bolts, or runs suddenly.
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Noun
bolter (plural bolters)
- A person or thing that bolts, or runs suddenly.
- Bolting can be one of the worst problems in dogdom to solve. We′ve all seen a bolter — or rather, we haven't seen him. We released him to hunt, and he was gone for the day, the week, the month. I′ve known of bolters to be gone for years.1992 June, Bill Tarrant, Gun Dogs: Problems with a Hunting Pattern, Field & Stream, page 104
- A plant that grows larger and more rapidly than usual.
- Evidence is accumulating that bolters are plants which have changed their long-day habit to that of short-day.1949, Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, published 2000, page 68
- A machine or mechanism that automatically sifts milled flour.
- The bolter was basically a sheet or roll of wire mesh or cloth (most often canvas or linen, but sometimes silk or another fabric). The flour produced by the mill was fed through or over the device, which was shaken by a mechanism (several were possible) taking power from the drive train leading...1983, Terry S. Reynolds, Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel, page 138
- A person who sifts flour or meal.
- A filter mechanism.
- This first bolter contains a screen of eight meshes to the inch and separates the hard particles, dirt or scale.1920, Henry Palmer Westcott, Hand Book of Natural Gas, page 634
- An obscure athlete who wins an upset victory.
- Last year he was eliminated by the bolter Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and this time he was beaten by the shining star, Fernando Verdasco.2009 February 2, Todd Woodbridge, “Only a few stars head home happy”, in Herald Sun
- A horse that wins at long odds.
- In team sports, a relatively little-known or inexperienced player who inspires the team to greater success.
- A member of a political party who does not support the party's nominee.
- The bolters from the Republican convention say, in their manifesto: "Discontent and distress prevail to an extent never before known in the history of the country."2007, William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man and Other Essays, page 149
- A missed landing on an aircraft carrier; an aircraft that has made a missed landing.
- A kind of fishing line; a boulter.
- Someone who equips a sport route by putting bolts in the rock.
Verb
bolter (third-person singular simple present bolters, present participle boltering, simple past and past participle boltered)
- To smear or become smeared with a grimy substance.
- Methinks I see them with their boltered hair, Staring and grinning in thy gentle face, And in their ruthless hands their daggers drawn,1592, anonymous author, Arden of Faversham
- Now I see 'tis true, For the blood-boltered Banquo smiles upon me, And points at them for his.1606, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth
- To sift or filter through a sieve or bolter.
- A thousand times the day, our Sieve is crowned; A thousand times 'tis drained: Let the Sieve once he strained, And, grain by grain, around Ye shall behold the ground Covered with folk, cast from the boltering Sieve.1888, John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: It̲alian literature, page 392
- Owing to the scarcity of food the old problem has latterly cropped up again whether, instead of baking white-bread, it would not be more practical to make bread of unboltered meal, since through the process of boltering the grain loses 20-30% of its nutritive value, according to the degree of...1919, Afdeeling Natuurkunde, Proceedings of the Section of Sciences - Volume 21, page 49
- To fish using a bolter.
- Those who are not boltering or spillering in the spring are crabbing.1915, British Sea Anglers' Society, Quarterly - Issues 31-45, page 77
- Yes, as a place of residence our little town should commend itself to the wealthy leisured classes; and as for us poor working folk, why, we manage to get along tolerable well, thank 'e, what with our crabbing, and spiltering, and boltering, and trammelling, and teeling our little plats of land...1942, Charles Lee, Cornish Tales, page 110
- To pound rapidly.
- In Elliotson v. Feetham, 2 Bingham's N.C., 134, in 1835, the plaintiff a physician resideing in the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, in the county of Middlesex, and possessed of a house for a term of years, sued the defendant in case for a nuisance in carrying on an iron-mongery factory...1852, The Western Law Journal - Volume 9, page 446
- The author refers the case of a teenager, eighteen years old, suffering from stuttering and boltering along with symptoms of anxiety, shakings and sweats.1978, Rivista internazionale di psicologia e ipnosi - Volumes 19-20, page 200
- To swim or turn sideways while eating.
- Close observers of the habits of whales in more recent times however do not record this practice and it must be regarded as a fanciful belief which probably arose as Gunther (1949) suggests as a fisherman's explanation of the patches and their frequent association with boltering whales.1929, Discovery Reports - Volume 32, page 215
- Concerning with feeding habits of baleen whales, it has been also known that they follow to two different ways to collect the food organisms, say, “skimming” and “swallowing ” or “gulping ” by boltering the body while feeding,1974, The Scientific Reports of the Whales Research Institute
- To miss a landing on an aircraft carrier by failing to catch the arresting gear wires with the aircraft's tailhook.
- Commander Kleemann came back and boltered again on his second attempt. lt is unheard of for him to bolter twice in a row. Then on his third attempt he got aboard with an OK three-wire trap.1982, Bert Kinzey, F-14 A & B Tomcat: in detail & scale, page 46
- In the Diamondback's ready room, a tailhook bolt hangs by a string from the ceiling over one pilot's seat; he was the last to "bolter" that day, meaning he missed the wires while landing and had to make another pass.1994, U.S. News & World Report - Volume 116, Issues 1-8, page 163
Proper noun capitalized: Bolter
Bolter (plural Bolters)
- A surname originating as an occupation.
bolter meaning in Tamil
bolter in Tamil
- விரைந்து ஓடுபவர்
Examples of bolter in a sentence
- The bolter was basically a sheet or roll of wire mesh or cloth (most often canvas or linen, but sometimes silk or another fabric).1983, Terry S. Reynolds, Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel, page 138:
- A saddler refused to black the linen lining of a harness-collar, though he had been told to do so, because the colouring would "bolter" the horse.1903, The Academy and Literature - Volume 63, page 104:
- Then escaping from the foemen, boltered with the blood you shed, you, defiant, fearing no men, saved your honor and your head!.2001, Gayden Wren, A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert and Sullivan:
- Yet when I lay awake at night contemplating the months ahead, my heart would bolter and my breathing quicken.2000, John Paul Newport, The Fine Green Line:
Antonyms of bolter
Forms of bolter
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | bolters |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | bolters |
| present participle | boltering |
| past participle | boltered |
| past | boltered |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Bolters |
Origin of bolter
From bolt + -er.
From bolter, an occupational surname for a sifter of flour, or for a maker of bolts.
Words that rhyme with bolter
Questions about bolter
- What does bolter mean?
- Bolter means a person or thing that bolts, or runs suddenly.
- What is bolter in Tamil?
- Bolter in Tamil is விரைந்து ஓடுபவர். See Bolter meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use bolter in a sentence?
- The bolter was basically a sheet or roll of wire mesh or cloth (most often canvas or linen, but sometimes silk or another fabric).
- What part of speech is bolter?
- Bolter can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce bolter?
- Bolter is pronounced /ˈbɒltə/ (England).
- What is the plural of bolter?
- The plural of bolter is bolters.
Words near bolter in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bolter (page history and authors); Bolter (page history and authors); bolter (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 bolter.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bolter.wav.
Cite this entry: “bolter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bolter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.