bolter

noun bolters

1. A person or thing that bolts, or runs suddenly. 1992 June, Bill Tarrant, Gun Dogs: Problems with a Hunting Pattern, Field & Stream, page 104, Bolting can be one of the worst problems in dogdom to solve. We′ve all seen a bolter — or rather, we haven't seen him. We released him to hunt, and he was gone for the day, the week, the month. I′ve known o
2. A plant that grows larger and more rapidly than usual. Evidence is accumulating that bolters are plants which have changed their long-day habit to that of short-day.
3. A machine or mechanism that automatically sifts milled flour. The bolter was basically a sheet or roll of wire mesh or cloth (most often canvas or linen, but sometimes silk or another fabric). The flour produced by the mill was fed through or over the device, which was shaken by a mechanism (several were possible) taking power from the drive train leading from
4. A person who sifts flour or meal.
5. A filter mechanism. This first bolter contains a screen of eight meshes to the inch and separates the hard particles, dirt or scale.
6. Australia An obscure athlete who wins an upset victory. Last year he was eliminated by the bolter Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and this time he was beaten by the shining star, Fernando Verdasco.
7. Australia A horse that wins at long odds.
8. New Zealand In team sports, a relatively little-known or inexperienced player who inspires the team to greater success.
9. US A member of a political party who does not support the party's nominee. The bolters from the Republican convention say, in their manifesto: "Discontent and distress prevail to an extent never before known in the history of the country."
10. A missed landing on an aircraft carrier; an aircraft that has made a missed landing.
11. A kind of fishing line; a boulter.
12. Someone who equips a sport route by putting bolts in the rock.

Opposite: trap

verb bolters · boltering · boltered

1. dialectal To smear or become smeared with a grimy substance. Methinks I see them with their boltered hair, Staring and grinning in thy gentle face, And in their ruthless hands their daggers drawn,
2. To sift or filter through a sieve or bolter. A thousand times the day, our Sieve is crowned; A thousand times 'tis drained: Let the Sieve once he strained, And, grain by grain, around Ye shall behold the ground Covered with folk, cast from the boltering Sieve.
3. To fish using a bolter. Those who are not boltering or spillering in the spring are crabbing.
4. To pound rapidly. In Elliotson v. Feetham, 2 Bingham's N.C., 134, in 1835, the plaintiff a physician resideing in the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, in the county of Middlesex, and possessed of a house for a term of years, sued the defendant in case for a nuisance in carrying on an iron-mongery factory, "makin
5. of a whale To swim or turn sideways while eating. Close observers of the habits of whales in more recent times however do not record this practice and it must be regarded as a fanciful belief which probably arose as Gunther (1949) suggests as a fisherman's explanation of the patches and their frequent association with boltering whales.
6. To miss a landing on an aircraft carrier by failing to catch the arresting gear wires with the aircraft's tailhook. Commander Kleemann came back and boltered again on his second attempt. lt is unheard of for him to bolter twice in a row. Then on his third attempt he got aboard with an OK three-wire trap.

Opposite: trap

proper noun Bolters

1. A surname originating as an occupation.