Trencher

//ˈtɹɛnt͡ʃə(ɹ)// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A plate on which food is served or cut. archaic, historical

    "Mrs Partridge, upon this, immediately fell into a fury, and discharged the trencher on which she was eating, at the head of poor Jenny […]"

  2. 2
    a wooden board or platter on which food is served or carved wordnet
  3. 3
    Someone who trenches; especially, one who cuts or digs ditches.
  4. 4
    someone who digs trenches wordnet
  5. 5
    A machine for digging trenches.

    "The milling action of the bucket line enables the trencher to cut through difficult materials, such as stone rubble and brick filling, and to leave a good trench with clean side walls."

Synonyms

All synonyms
dishplatereceptacle

Example

More examples

"He that waits upon another's trencher, makes many a little dinner."

Etymology

From Middle English trenchour, from Anglo-Norman trenchour and Old Northern French trencheor (French tranchoir), from trenchier (“to cut, to carve”). See trench (verb).

Related phrases

fruit-trencherlick-trencherspin the trenchertrencher captrencher flytrencher friendtrencher matetrencher-fedtrencher-man

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