stretcher
/ˈstrɛtʃə
/noun
1A framework of two poles with a long piece of canvas slung between them, used for carrying sick, injured, or dead people.At any time of the day or night, a tall RAF corporal would be seen helping to carry a stretcher containing an injured soldier into the tent....
- As soon as the lead ambulance arrived he was told who to evacuate and helped carry the injured on stretchers.
- Within minutes, the injured were being carried away on stretchers, clad in thermal blankets to keep them warm against shock.
2A wooden frame over which a canvas is spread and tautened ready for painting.It was credible for the wall to look thickly mortared, but not for the wooden stretchers of a canvas, or a man's coat, to be similarly treated....
- Since then most canvas paintings have been attached to lightweight wooden frameworks or stretchers.
- So the rest of the day is to be spent getting stretchers and canvases ready.
2.1 [with modifier] A rod or frame used for expanding or tautening a specified thing: sail stretchers...
- Figure 21 illustrates four different glove stretchers that often do double duty as glove powder dispensers and hand measurers.
- We have rented a carpet stretcher, but are having problems getting the wrinkles out.
- Well, he said I needed a 'sail stretcher'.
3A rod or bar joining and supporting chair legs.Chairs imported from New England, particularly Boston, influenced the design of this chair, especially in its stretchers, relatively light seat rails, and yoked crest....
- Boston was producing leather-back chairs during this period with very bold ball-ring-ball turned front stretchers.
- One needed a title, however, to appreciate the majesty of the tall, ostentatious chairs with upholstered, haughty-looking backs and stretchers reinforcing the legs.
3.1A board in a boat against which a rower presses the feet for support.A foot stretcher breakage in the Egyptian boat caused the second semi-final to be delayed....
- The foot stretcher is easily positioned to achieve these positions by loosening the 3 wing nuts and moving the foot stretcher along the adjustment plates.
- This stretcher when incorporated with the camlock is able to suit any boat and is easy to adjust.
4A brick or stone laid with its long side along the face of a wall. Compare with header (sense 3).To understand the following patterns, you'll want to know that stretchers are brick laid lengthwise along the wall....
- The bricks are laid in alternate pairs of headers and stretchers.
- Below the sills of these bedrooms are stone stretchers that extend from one column base to the next.
5 archaic, informal An exaggeration or lie.Mark Twain is quoted: "mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before."...
- One way of doing that is to refer to prior unsworn occasions when you may have told the ‘stretcher’ in question
verb [with object]
Carry (a sick or injured person) somewhere on a stretcher: their striker had to be stretchered off following a tackle...
- No one will truly believe he is injured today unless he is stretchered away with a limb hanging off.
- The following year, a surgeon told her her career was over after she was stretchered off the track at the world championships with a ruptured Achilles tendon.
- One young woman was stretchered from the beach on a makeshift platform of planks and a rubber mat after tumbling from the rocks as she tried to escape a tear gas pellet.
