Gaffer
name, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A chief lighting technician for a motion-picture or television production.
- 2 An old person, usually a man. colloquial
"If thou return not, Gammer o'er her pail Will sing in sorrow, 'neath the brinded cow, And Gaffer sigh over his nut-brown ale […]"
- 3 a person who exercises control over workers wordnet
- 4 A glassblower.
"The apprentice carries a gather of glass on the blowpipe to the gaffer's bench […]"
- 5 The leader of a group or team, such as a boss, foreman, coach, or publican. UK, informal
"And you're here to tell me what's what. Just like your bloody gaffer promised."
Show 5 more definitions
- 6 an electrician responsible for lighting on a movie or tv set wordnet
- 7 Someone aboard a boat whose duty is to gaff a (large) fish once the angler has reeled it in.
- 8 A sailor.
- 9 an elderly man wordnet
- 10 The baby in the house. Canada
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"As she was going through the wood, she met Gaffer Wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up; but he dared not, because of some fagot-makers hard by in the forest. He asked her whither she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and hear a wolf talk, said to him:— "I am going to see my grandmother, and carry her a custard and a little pot of butter from my mamma."
Etymology
From gaff (“hook”) + -er. * (cinema): The natural lighting on early film sets was adjusted by opening and closing flaps in the tent cloths, called gaff cloths or gaff flaps. * (glass)
Likely a contraction of godfather, but with the vowels influenced by grandfather. Compare French compère, German Gevatter. Compare also Old English ġefædera (“godfather”), of which some unattested dialectal descendant may have been an influence.
Related phrases
More for "gaffer"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.