Word.ws English Dictionary

stoker

/ˈstəʊkə/US/ˈstoʊkɚ/

stoker noun: a person who stokes, especially one on a steamship or steam train, who stokes coal in the boilers.

Noun

stoker (plural stokers)

  1. A person who stokes, especially one on a steamship or steam train, who stokes coal in the boilers.
    • For this was a line so little frequented, especially at this hour, when the driver, the stoker, the guard and the station staffs all along the line, were anhelating towards their wives, after the long hours of continence, that the train would hardly draw up, when it would be off again, like a...1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
    • He held strongly to the black-ganger's philosophy - what is the use of all the radar and guns and torpedoes if you don't have the engineers and stokers to put them in the right position?1960, J.E. Macdonnell, Escort Ship, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, published 1972, page 22
  2. A device for stoking a fire; a poker.
    Synonyms:
    firestick, poker
  3. A device that feeds coal into a furnace, etc., automatically.
    • As we reported was to occur, two of Saltley's stoker-fitted 2-10-0s, Nos. 92165/7, have been stripped of their stokers at Crewe works.1962 April, “Motive power miscellany: London Midland Region”, in Modern Railways, page 278
  4. A person who pedals on the back of a tandem bicycle.

Proper noun capitalized: Stoker

Stoker (plural Stokers)

  1. A surname.

stoker meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Arabic and Malay

stoker in Urdu

جھونکنے والا

stoker in Bengali

জ্বালানি প্রদানকারী ব্যক্তি, যন্ত্র

stoker in Arabic

person who stokes
عَطَشْجِيّ ʕaṭašjiyy

stoker in Malay

person who stokes
pendandang

Synonyms of stoker

Forms of stoker

Noun
pluralstokers
Proper noun
pluralStokers

Plural of stoker: stokers

Origin of stoker

From Middle Dutch stoker (“stoker”), from Middle Dutch stoken (“to stoke, incite”, literally “to poke, jab, thrust”), ultimately equivalent to stoke + -er. More at stoke. Compare typologically Russian кочега́р (kočegár) (akin to кочерга́ (kočergá, “poker”)).

Words formed from stoker

Words that rhyme with stoker

Questions about stoker

What does stoker mean?
Stoker means a person who stokes, especially one on a steamship or steam train, who stokes coal in the boilers.
What is stoker in Urdu?
Stoker in Urdu is جھونکنے والا. See Stoker meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is stoker?
Stoker can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce stoker?
Stoker is pronounced /ˈstoʊkɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of stoker?
The plural of stoker is stokers.

Words near stoker in the dictionary

  1. stokeholes
  2. Stokely
  3. Stokelys
  4. Stokenchurch
  5. Stokenham
  6. stoker
  7. stoker-fired
  8. Stokerian
  9. stokerless
  10. stokers
  11. Stokers Siding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stoker (page history and authors); Stoker (page history and authors); stoker (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stoker (Bengali 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.

Last updated:

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

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