Clearers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual or entity responsible for removing obstacles or impurities from a space or concept
2. A person or organization engaged in the act of facilitating transactions, particularly in finance or markets
3. A professional who ensures compliance with regulations by clarifying and eliminating uncertainties surrounding a process or operation

Etymology: The word "clearer" is one of those plain English formations that hides a long Latin ancestry. The adjective "clear" came into English through Old French "cler" from Latin "clārus", meaning bright, luminous or famous, and the Latin root traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root for light and brightness. The "-er" ending is an ordinary English suffix, so a clearer is simply something that clears, and "clearers" is its plural. The sense you are asking about is a banking one. Here "clearer" names a bank or institution that settles payments between other banks, and "clearers" is the plural for several such institutions. The key idea is that the word has moved from the sense of making something transparent or clean to a sense of making accounts balance. Banks "clear" a cheque when the money actually moves, so the institutions doing this work came to be called clearers.

Synonyms: settlers, mediators, arbiters, facilitators, cleansers

Antonyms: blockers, obstructors, hiders, complicators, confusers