roper
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: games
gaming
Etymology: From Middle English roper, ropere; equivalent to rope + -er.
Base: rope
Affixes: -er
Inflected forms:
form: ropers
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: A ropemaker (a maker of ropes).
pos: noun
tags: dated
examples: But Gideon Giles was no common man, although a roper.
A roper's wife, for instance, was able to fool her incredibly gullible husband while having an affair with a prior literally right under the roper's nose, the guilty pair having sex while they lay together in the same bed as the sleeping roper.
gloss: One who ropes goods; a packer.
pos: noun
examples: I have seen 50 to 60 men doing this work, and the men vied with each other to see which could cap or rope the best; and if a bale was turned off from the capper that did not look well, some of the others would criticise it, and the same with ropers.
About thirty per cent of all the women employed in the packing plant are in the sausage department. They work as linkers, tie-ers, ropers and hangers; help in the preparation of the raw materials, mix spices, and wash pans.
The diggers pay their "ropers" $10/bu for "littlenecks" and $1/bu for "cherrystones." On good days, each digger may gross almost $600. After paying the roper, this leaves him with about $500 a day before other expenses are taken out.
gloss: Synonym of outside man (“accomplice who locates a mark to be swindled by a confidence trickster”).
pos: noun
tags: slang
examples: The "roper" will inform the mark that such horses can't be picked out of the Form; what one needs is inside information.
Here's how it usually goes: You're forced to rely on the only tow truck driver in the entire county, who turns out to be a roper for the local inbred family of serial killers.
For example, one person may have a specialty in cooling off the mark, while another is able to lure in the mark with ease; these people may be referred to as the “roper” or the “outside man”.
What have you got—a store con? Shall you be needing a roper?
gloss: A person hired by a gambling establishment to locate potential customers and bring them in.
pos: noun
examples: Any person who, in this city, lives idly and is a gambler, or roper, steerer or capper for any gambling house or room, or any gambling game, or who lives idly and has the reputation of being a gambler, or roper, steerer or capper for any gambling house or room, or any gambling game, shall be considered and treated as a vagrant.
Ropers like the one he'd sent packing would never steer him to such a highclass joint. So he kept giving the ropers the shove while he watched to see arriving customers point the way.
His old partner Allen Jones hired him as a roper for his gambling operation located across the street from the St. Charles Hotel.
He first appeared among St. Louis sporting men as a “roper” and venturesome player against the bank.
gloss: An undercover informer.
pos: noun
tags: slang
examples: Supposing in a plant on a job a roper roped a man, who was, let us say, employed by the company, and maybe a member of the union, how much would he get after he was roped?
Such an operative might also be the contact for one or more "missionaries" or labour spies. The roper who was sent for was Louis M. Wendell.
By 1876, however, he was well launched on a career as a professional informer, or “roper,” for the Secret Service.
gloss: Any of a variety of monsters with tentacles that they use to capture victims.
pos: noun
examples: The party ran into a statue of a roper, which somehow attacked them.
Stone ropers are distant relatives of the common roper though the two races are do not (as far as sages know) associate with one another.
I understand this to mean that passive Wisdom (Perception)—and even Searching—will never reveal a roper for what it is as long as it holds still. Its Stealth skill comes into play only if it's moving. Thus, a stationary roper takes its opponents by surprise, as long as its eye is closed and its tendrils retracted until it strikes.
Moments ago, vines had shot from the ground to lash at us; I'd thought at first that they were the tentacles of a worm or roper monster, but the leaves revealed that we were dealing·with some kind of plant creature.
Related words: goat roper
outroper
top-roper
Translations: