supporters

Noun

supporter (plural supporters)

1. A person who supports, promotes, advocates or champions a cause, movement, or political party; an adherent.
   • During the latter part of the rebellion, he has pretended to be a warm supporter of the Government, and he may have been sincere; but, from what others have told me, he said to them he was not during the early part of the rebellion.1865, “Defense of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd”, in Benn Pitman, compiler, The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators David E. Herold, Mary E. Surratt, Lewis Payne, George A....
2. A person who provides moral or physical support to another; an attendant participating in a ceremony or procession.
   • The Inthronization. The King ascended the Theatre, accompanied by the two Bishops his Supporters, the Great Officers of State, the Lords carrying the Swords, and the Lords who had borne Their Majesties' Regalia, and was Inthroned by the Archbishops, Bishops, and the other Peers, who then stood...1937 November 10, “Ceremonial of the Coronation of Their Majesties [King George VI and his wife Elizabeth, Westminster Abbey, London, 12 May 1937]”, in The London Gazette (Supplement), number 34453...
3. Someone who is a fan of a certain sports team or sportsperson.
   • More than 10,000 supporters attended the last match.
4. Something that supports another thing.
   • Combustibility, then, is not a quality of the combustible, taken by itself. It is merely a faculty which may be brought into action through the instrumentality of a corresponding faculty in some other body. It is, in the case now before us, the union of the combustible with oxygen, and which, for...1841, C[harles] W[ye] Williams, “Of Gaseous Combinations, and Particularly of the Union of Coal-gas and Atmospheric Air”, in The Combustion of Coal and the Prevention of Smoke Chemically and...
   1. Something that supports a structure such as a building or a sculpture.
      • Plane surfaces predominate in this factory. The glass and iron walls are joined cleanly at the corners without the intervention of piers[…]. [Peter] Behrens bounded the glass walls of his famous Turbine Hall right and left with monumental cyclopean walls. These have disappeared with [Walter]...1967, Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Charles Eliot Norton lectures, 1938-1939.), 5th rev. and enl. edition, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press...
   2. An animal or figure that supports a shield in a coat of arms.
      • […] I am fully perſuaded that there cannot remain a doubt of the uſe of ſupporters having originated from the fancy of ſeal-engravers. Supporters were likewiſe anciently uſed by divers perſons in private life, as appears by their ſeals, who had offices of high dignity in the ſtate, and more...1780, Joseph Edmondson, [Joseph Ayloffe], “Marshalling”, in A Complete Body of Heraldry: … Glover's Ordinary of Arms, Augmented and Improved; an Alphabet of Arms, Containing upwards of Fifty Thousand...

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