Striper

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large marine game fish with dark horizontal lines along its silver body ; a person or tool that paints or applies stripes onto a surface
2. An edible North American fish of the bass family marked with dark lengthwise bands ; a worker or device used to mark surfaces with lines of color
3. A sport fish known for its striped flanks found in coastal and river waters ; someone or something that produces stripes when applying paint or tape

Etymology: "Striper" is one of those words that turns out to be three unrelated words sharing a spelling, each built the same way: a noun or verb of "stripe" with the suffix "-er" added. The suffix does different jobs in each case. In the military sense, it marks a person who has a certain number of stripes, so a "two-striper" is a soldier wearing two chevrons on the sleeve, and the word is simply a count of marks of rank. In the fish sense, "striper" names a striped fish, most famously the striped bass, where the suffix works as a relational ending meaning "the one with stripes." The device sense is the odd one out. Here the verb "stripe" (to mark with bands of colour or to flog with lashes, which left stripes on the back) is combined with the agent suffix, so a striper is a thing that does the striping. In practice this means a machine or tool that applies stripes, such as a road-marking device or a paint applicator used on sports fields.

Synonyms: striped bass