harvester

Etymology

It is formed from English harvest + -er, from the verb.^[1][2][3][4] The verb harvest, recorded from about 1400, comes from the noun,^[1][2] which is from Old English hærfest (“autumn”).^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A reaper, a person who gathers in a crop: 1589, in George Peele's Eglogue Gratulatorie.^[1] Etymonline dates it to the 1590s,^[2] and Dictionary.com to 1580–90.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word was first used of people who work at the harvest, as Johnson (1755) defined it.^[1][6] With the mechanisation of farming it came to mean a reaping machine, especially one that also binds the sheaves: the OED's first record is an American patent of 1848,^[1] and Etymonline dates the sense to 1847.^[2] It was later applied to machines for gathering any particular crop,^[1] and today especially a combine harvester.^[7][3] From 1882 the word also named the harvesting ant,^[1] and it has been applied to the harvestman and the harvest mite.^[1][3][8] In dialect it was a harvest labourer in North Yorkshire and a reaping machine or harvest hook in Berkshire.^[9] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also records it for a gatherer of things other than crops.^[8]

Timeline

• 1589 – a reaper, a person who gathers in a harvest.^[1]
• 1848 – a reaping machine, especially one that also binds the sheaves.^[1] Etymonline dates this sense to 1847.^[2]
• 1882 – a harvesting ant.^[1]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who gathers in a crop: The harvesters worked until dusk to bring in the barley.^[7][10][8]
2. A machine for harvesting crops, especially a combine harvester.^[7][10][8]
3. A person or thing that gathers something other than crops.^[8]
4. A harvestman, or a harvester ant.^[8][3][1]

Word family

• harvester ant

Related words

• harvest
• harvestman

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ 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)
10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin