Shunter

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A railway locomotive used for shunting (switching). British

    "Concurrent to this order, Good forged a link with Irish Railways, which resulted in the latter building five shunters with Brush equipment, marking the inception of dieselisation in the country."

  2. 2
    a small locomotive used to move cars around but not to make trips wordnet
  3. 3
    A person who carries out shunting operations. British

    "The electric locomotive is accompanied by a shunter who, in addition to his normal duties, flags the trains over the unprotected level crossings and opens the gates through which the line passes."

  4. 4
    One who shunts (carries on arbitrage between London and provincial stock exchanges). UK, historical

Synonyms

All synonyms
switcher;hostlerpony engineshunting engineswitch engine

Example

More examples

"Concurrent to this order, Good forged a link with Irish Railways, which resulted in the latter building five shunters with Brush equipment, marking the inception of dieselisation in the country."

Etymology

From shunt + -er.

Related phrases

cocoa shuntermutton shunter

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