Meaning & use
beater
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A kitchen tool or machine part with wires or blades that whisks eggs, cream or batter.
Grammar: Often a compound: an egg beater, or the beaters of an electric mixer.
Patterns
- an egg beater
- the beaters of a mixer
She licked the batter off the beater after mixing the cake.
Please clip both beaters into the electric mixer.
An old hand-turned beater was all my grandmother ever used for whipping cream.
nouncountableinformalAmerican
An old, battered car that is still good enough to drive.
Grammar: Informal and mainly American; it suggests a cheap car, not a collector's one.
Patterns
- drive a beater
He drove a beater to work so that he would not worry about dents.
My first car was a rusty beater that cost me three hundred dollars.
We keep a beater in the driveway for hauling things to the dump.
nouncountablespecialist
A person who hits something, or who drives game birds or animals out of cover so that they can be shot.
Grammar: Usually appears in compounds such as carpet beater, or alone for a helper at a shoot.
Patterns
- a beater at a shoot
- a carpet beater
The beaters walked through the woods in a line, tapping the undergrowth with sticks.
She hung the rug on the fence and hit it with a carpet beater.
Several local boys earned pocket money as beaters at the weekend shoots.
Word forms
| plural | beaters |
|---|
Common combinations
- an egg beater
- An egg beater is useful for making pancake batter.
- an electric beater
- I borrowed an electric beater to whip the cream.
- a carpet beater
- The carpet beater sent clouds of dust into the air.
- a rusty old beater
- He turned up in a rusty old beater with one door held shut by string.
- drive a beater
- Students often drive a beater to save money.
Synonyms and how they differ
- whisk
- A whisk is a hand tool of looped wires, whereas a beater is usually one of the paired attachments of an electric mixer.
- banger
- Banger is a British informal word for an old car, while beater is the American equivalent.
- clunker
- Clunker stresses that the car is noisy or close to breaking down, but a beater still runs reliably enough.
- jalopy
- Jalopy is an old-fashioned word for a ramshackle car, and it sounds humorous.
Word family
Practice
Which sentence uses beater to mean an old car?
Choose one answer.
Only the third sentence describes a battered but working car. The others use beater as a kitchen tool, a person at a shoot, and a rug tool.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “beater”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.