A policy-numbers agent or collector. (Note: Runners often build up a large personal following of players, receive as much as twenty-five percent of the money collected from bettors and an additional ten per cent as a bonus to be deducted from the bettor’s winnings.)

- american underworld dictionary - 1950

Run"ner (?), n. [From Run.]

1.

One who, or that which, runs; a racer.

2.

A detective.

[Slang, Eng.]

Dickens.

3.

A messenger.

Swift.

4.

A smuggler.

[Colloq.]

R. North.

5.

One employed to solicit patronage, as for a steamboat, hotel, shop, etc.

[Cant, U.S.]

6. Bot.

A slender trailing branch which takes root at the joints or end and there forms new plants, as in the strawberry and the common cinquefoil.

7.

The rotating stone of a set of millstones.

8. Naut.

A rope through a block and used to increase the mechanical power of a tackle.

Totten.

9.

One of the pieces on which a sled or sleigh slides; also the part or blade of a skate which slides on the ice.

10. Founding (a)

A horizontal channel in a mold, through which the metal flows to the cavity formed by the pattern; also, the waste metal left in such a channel.

(b)

A trough or channel for leading molten metal from a furnace to a ladle, mold, or pig bed.

11.

The movable piece to which the ribs of an umbrella are attached.

12. Zool.

A food fish (Elagatis pinnulatis) of Florida and the West Indies; -- called also skipjack, shoemaker, and yellowtail. The name alludes to its rapid successive leaps from the water.

13. Zool.

Any cursorial bird.

14. Mech. (a)

A movable slab or rubber used in grinding or polishing a surface of stone.

(b)

A tool on which lenses are fastened in a group, for polishing or grinding.

 

© Webster 1913.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.