Word.ws English Dictionary

rigger

/ˈɹɪɡə(ɹ)//ˈɹɪɡɚ/

rigger noun: one whose occupation is to fit the rigging of a ship or of a counterweight system. Also the ellipsis of outrigger.

Noun

rigger (plural riggers)

  1. One whose occupation is to fit the rigging of a ship or of a counterweight system.
    • So far there was not a hitch. The workpeople, to be sure — riggers and what not — were most annoyingly slow; but time cured that. It was the crew that troubled me.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
  2. One whose occupation is to lift and move large and heavy objects (such as industrial machinery) with the help of cables, hoists, and other equipment.
    • What if the rigger (the person who anchors the grids to the building ceiling) mishangs a single cable?1998, Glen Ballou, Handbook for Sound Engineers: The New Audio Cyclopedia, page 1250
  3. (animation) One whose occupation is to outfit a computer model with controls for animation.
    • It is common that after the rig is created an animator asks the rigger to create new controls, because the character needs to support new poses or simply needs to look better.2012, Verónica Orvalho, Pedro Bastos, Frederic Parke, Bruno Oliveira, Xenxo Alvarez, “A Facial Rigging Survey: State of the Art Report”, in EUROGRAPHICS
  4. A worker on an oil rig.
  5. One who rigs or manipulates (an election, etc).
    • The real riggers of electoral boundaries in New South Wales were those who got loose after 1965. When the boys from George Street and Ash Street got loose there was a majority in the Parliament. That is when there was a redistribution […]1988, Australian Parliament, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House of Representatives
    • An election rigger who assumes illegitimate political power would be primarily motivated to spread their corrosive toxins across the political system, thus rendering institutions of government dysfunctional and convoluted.2018, Cliff Edogun, The Rude Awakening: Nigerian Millennials Take Their Country by Storm., AuthorHouse, →ISBN
  6. A part of a rowing boat's equipment used to provide leverage for a rowing blade or oar around a fixed fulcrum.
  7. (in-compounds) A ship with a certain type of rigging.
  8. A cylindrical pulley or drum in machinery.
  9. (New Zealand) A plastic bottle of beer, typically between 1 L to 2.5 L volume.
  10. A long, slender, pointed sable paintbrush for making fine lines, etc.; said to be so called from its use for drawing the lines of the rigging of ships.
  11. A person who applies functional or artistic rope bondage to another person's body.

Also used as

rigger is also the ellipsis of outrigger.

rigger meaning in Indonesian

rigger in Indonesian

one who rigs or dresses
juru ikat

Forms of rigger

pluralriggers

Origin of rigger

From rig + -er.

Abbreviation

Words formed from rigger

Words that rhyme with rigger

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about rigger

What does rigger mean?
Rigger means one whose occupation is to fit the rigging of a ship or of a counterweight system.
What is rigger in Indonesian?
Rigger in Indonesian is juru ikat. See Rigger meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is rigger?
Rigger is a noun.
How do you pronounce rigger?
Rigger is pronounced /ˈɹɪɡə(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the plural of rigger?
The plural of rigger is riggers.

Words near rigger in the dictionary

  1. rigged out
  2. Riggen
  3. Riggenbach
  4. Riggenbachs
  5. Riggens
  6. rigger
  7. riggers
  8. Riggi
  9. riggies
  10. Riggin
  11. riggin'

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rigger (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-rigger.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-NaomiAmethyst-rigger.wav.

Cite this entry: “rigger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rigger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.