Word.ws English Dictionary

tapers

tapers is the plural of taper.

Meaning of taper

Noun

taper (plural tapers)

  1. A slender wax candle.
    • Strike on the Tinder, hoa:
      Giue me a Taper […]c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  2. (broadly) A small light.
  3. A tapering form; gradual diminution of thickness and/or cross section in an elongated object.
    • the taper of a spire
  4. The portion of an object with such a form.
    • ensuring the cleanliness of the taper of a machine tool spindle or of a tool shank
  5. (historical) A long wick or thin stick used for transferring flames to candles, now usually chemically-treated to burn particularly slowly.
    Synonyms:
    spill, match, spunk
  6. A cone-shaped item for stretching the hole for an ear gauge (piercing).

See all 14 meanings of taper

Phrases with tapers

Questions about tapers

What is tapers the plural of?
Tapers is the plural of taper.

Words near tapers in the dictionary

  1. taperless
  2. taperlike
  3. taperly
  4. tapermaker
  5. taperness
  6. tapers
  7. tapers off
  8. taperstick
  9. tapersticks
  10. tapertail
  11. tapertails

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tapers (page history and authors); taper (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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Cite this entry: “tapers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tapers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.