gaffer.
A chief lighting technician for a motion-picture or television production.
Meaning & usage
A chief lighting technician for a motion-picture or television production.
A glassblower.
Someone aboard a boat whose duty is to gaff a (large) fish once the angler has reeled it in.
Where this word comes from
From gaff (“hook”) + -er. * (cinema): The natural lighting on early film sets was adjusted by opening and closing flaps in the tent cloths, called gaff cloths or gaff flaps. * (glass)
An old person, usually a man.
The leader of a group or team, such as a boss, foreman, coach, or publican.
A sailor.
The baby in the house.
Where this word comes from
Likely a contraction of godfather, but with the vowels influenced by grandfather. Compare French compère, German Gevatter. Compare also Old English ġefædera (“godfather”), of which some unattested dialectal descendant may have been an influence.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.