rooters

Noun

rooter (plural rooters)

1. One who, or that which, roots; one that tears up by the roots.
   • The rooter was terrorized, what with the mechanical noises right behind it, and it abandoned evasive turns and darts and made for the horizon with pitiful desperation.1994, Paul Quarrington, Civilization: And Its Part in My Downfall, page 205
2. (broadly) A type of heavy machinery similar to a plow for breaking up soil, concrete, asphalt, etc.
   • The five rooters or plows are so fastened in the frame that any one or all can be removed if desired, and each rooter is provided with a removable point, which can be taken off and sharpened without removing the entire rooter from the from the frame.1920, Halbert Powers Gillette, Earthwork and Its Cost: A Handbook of Earth Excavation, page 122
3. A blade for producing a narrow groove in a piece of wood.
   • In cutting across the grain a small steel cutter, No. 10, must first be used in a similar manner, moving the strip of wood which acts as a gauge, to cut the second line exactly the same width as the "rooter" blade; the "rooter" is then used as before, when the piece between the two lines made by...2023, William Bemrose, Manual of Buhl-Work and Marquetry, page ii
4. A device for boring a pathway through a blocked drain or sewer.
   • The rooter was the tool that convinced me that plumbers and doctors were only alike if you'd missed out on your daily cone of mull. The head of the sewer rooter looked like something an alien would use to bore into your skull.2007, Scot Gardner, The Legend of Kevin the Plumber
5. One who roots or rummages through something.
   • Like so many of the self-made industry emperors of the late 1800s, he had been little more than a pawnshop rooter masquerading in collector's clothing, a connoisseur of canvas monstrosities, trashy novels and poetry collections […]1969, Stephen King, The Reaper's Image
6. A type of malware that obtains and runs using privileged access, bypassing normal security systems.
   • In 2002 a new variant of auto-rooters was discovered in the wild: mass-rooters.2003, Lance Spitzner, Honeypots: Tracking Hackers, page 19

See all 9 meanings of rooter