COMFORTER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does comforter mean? 

• COMFORTER (noun)
  The noun COMFORTER has 4 senses:

1. a person who commiserates with someone who has had misfortune

2. a person who reduces the intensity (e.g., of fears) and calms and pacifies

3. bedding made of two layers of cloth filled with stuffing and stitched together

4. device used for an infant to suck or bite on

  Familiarity information: COMFORTER used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMFORTER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who commiserates with someone who has had misfortune

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

comforter; sympathiser; sympathizer

Hypernyms ("comforter" is a kind of...):

communicator (a person who communicates with others)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "comforter"):

Job's comforter (someone whose comfort is actually discouraging)

Derivation:

comfort (give moral or emotional strength to)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A person who reduces the intensity (e.g., of fears) and calms and pacifies

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

allayer; comforter; reliever

Context example:

an allayer of fears

Hypernyms ("comforter" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Derivation:

comfort (give moral or emotional strength to)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Bedding made of two layers of cloth filled with stuffing and stitched together

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

comfort; comforter; puff; quilt

Hypernyms ("comforter" is a kind of...):

bed clothing; bedclothes; bedding (coverings that are used on a bed)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "comforter"):

continental quilt; duvet; eiderdown (a soft quilt usually filled with the down of the eider)

patchwork; patchwork quilt (a quilt made by sewing patches of different materials together)

Derivation:

comfort (lessen pain or discomfort; alleviate)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Device used for an infant to suck or bite on

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

baby's dummy; comforter; pacifier; teething ring

Hypernyms ("comforter" is a kind of...):

device (an instrumentality invented for a particular purpose)

Derivation:

comfort (lessen pain or discomfort; alleviate)

 Context examples 

We are all unhappy; but will not that be an additional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I could go back and be his comforter—his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"What should they do without her? They were wretched comforters for one another."

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in the centre of the Court.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Here! answered a husky voice from above, and, running up, Meg found her sister eating apples and crying over the Heir of Redclyffe, wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Elinor was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but of imprudence, was readily offered.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

She indeed veiled her grief and strove to act the comforter to us all.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You will not be my comforter, my rescuer?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To outsiders the five energetic women seemed to rule the house, and so they did in many things, but the quiet scholar, sitting among his books, was still the head of the family, the household conscience, anchor, and comforter, for to him the busy, anxious women always turned in troublous times, finding him, in the truest sense of those sacred words, husband and father.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But I was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with a ready finger; and I felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)