noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A person who plays second string. A person who is kept on a sports team as a backup in case a "first-string" player is unavailable.
2. 2
   an athlete who plays only when a starter on the team is replaced wordnet
3. 3
   A person who is not good enough to be considered proficient but may be useful as a backup.

Synonyms

All synonyms

reservesubstitute

Etymology

From second string + -er.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.