Caulker

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A tradesman who fills seams and joints in boats, roofs or pipes with sealant to make them watertight ; a hand tool used to drive oakum or caulk into gaps ; a fitting or seal that closes a joint against leaks
2. Someone who packs gaps between planks or panels with waterproofing material ; an implement for forcing sealing compound into seams ; a snug joint or sealing piece preventing water from entering
3. A craftsman who makes joints watertight by filling them with pitch or sealant ; a instrument that drives filler into cracks ; a sealing element used to block leaks in a structure

Etymology: A caulker is the person who packs seams in a ship's hull or deck, and the tool's name, "caulk," traces back to a surprisingly distant place: the lime kiln. The Latin "calcāria" meant a kiln for burning lime, and the word for the mineral that went into it, "calx," gave the English verb its ancestry. Ships were sealed with lime-based material in the same way that masonry was bonded, and the connection between the kiln and the seam survives in the verb, even though the caulker's work involves oakum and pitch rather than burning. The verb "caulk" entered English through Old French from Latin, and the agent suffix "-er" was added to it in English to name the worker. The suffix itself has a longer road: it comes from the Latin "-ārius," passed into Old English as "-ere," and so it is an old, ordinary English ending rather than a later addition.

Synonyms: caulking iron, calker