stoker

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a worker who feeds fuel to and tends a furnace or boiler, especially on a steamship or steam train

   The stoker shoveled coal into the liner's boiler throughout the night watch.

2. 2
   noun

   a mechanical device that feeds solid fuel into a furnace

   An automatic stoker supplied coal to the furnace at a steady rate.

Borrowed in the seventeenth century from Dutch stoker, an agent noun from stoken, 'to poke or tend a fire.' The English verb stoke was later back-formed from stoker, although it is now natural to analyze the noun as stoke + -er.

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