bender

Etymology

It is formed from English bend + -er.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Dictionary.com notes that it already occurs in Middle English surnames, and dates it to 1200–1250.^[7] The slang sense "drinking bout" is of uncertain motivation: Etymonline suggests that it comes from the Scottish sense "a hard drinker", or from the figurative use of the verb bend for "strain, brace, wind up";^[3] Green's Dictionary of Slang suggests the image of a drunkard unsteady on his feet, or of bending a bow or the elbow.^[8] The sense "sixpence" is explained by the ease with which the thin coin could be bent.^[2][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

An instrument for bending, a pair of pliers: 1496, in the Treatise of Fishing with an Angle.^[2][3] The Oxford Dictionary of English names pliers as an example of the early instruments.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The agent sense, a person who bends, is recorded from 1590, in Spenser's Faerie Queene.^[2] The OED also has the word for a device for drawing back a crossbow (1684) and for a flexor muscle (1615–1668), both obsolete;^[2] Johnson (1755) gave "the person who bends" and "the instrument with which any thing is bent".^[6] In Scots, a bender was a hard drinker, recorded from 1728 in Allan Ramsay to 1810.^[2][3] The best-known sense, a drinking spree, is American slang first found in 1846 in a New Orleans collection, Pickings from the Picayune.^[2][3][8] Other 19th-century slang senses were a sixpence, from 1789 according to Green's Dictionary of Slang and in the OED from 1836 (Dickens),^[8][2] and a leg or knee, American, from 1849.^[2][3] In south-western dialect, in Devon and Cornwall, a bender was anything very large or good of its kind, a "whopper";^[10][2] in Kent bender and arrs meant a bow and arrows.^[10] In the 20th century the word came to mean a shelter of bent branches covered with canvas, first recorded in 1934 and originally used by Gypsies.^[2] From 1965 it was a derogatory slang term for a homosexual man.^[2][4] In American underworld slang a bender was a thief (1931) and a stolen car (1938),^[8] and in British prison slang a suspended sentence, from rhyming slang on suspender (1989).^[8]

Timeline

• 1496 – an instrument for bending, pliers.^[2]
• 1590 – a person who bends.^[2]
• 1728 – Scots, a hard drinker (obsolete by 1810).^[2][3]
• 1789 – slang, a sixpence.^[8]
• 1846 – American slang, a drinking spree.^[2][3][8]
• 1849 – American slang, a leg or knee.^[2][3]
• 1934 – a shelter of bent branches covered with canvas.^[2]
• 1965 – derogatory slang, a homosexual man.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (informal) A bout of heavy drinking; a spree: They went on a three-day bender after the wedding.^{[11][12][2][8]}
2. A person or thing that bends; a tool or machine for bending, such as a pipe bender.^[5][11][2]
3. (British) A shelter made of bent branches covered with canvas or tarpaulin.^[2]
4. (British slang, offensive) A homosexual man.^[2][4]
5. (slang) A sixpence.^[2][4][8]

Word family

• hellbender
• fender-bender
• gender bender

Related words

• bend
• bent

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
12. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster