[f. WADE v. + -ER1.]
1. One who wades.
1673. [R. Leigh], Transp. Reh., 120. So great a wader in discoveries … might be … employ’d in groping for the head of Nile.
1855. Tennyson, Brook, 117. James Made toward us, like a wader in the surf, Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.
1905. J. B. Firth, Highw. Derbysh., xxv. 372. Muddy channels … in which a wader would sink to his waist.
b. said of a bird; esp. as the distinctive appellation of those long-legged birds (as the heron, plover, snipe, etc., constituting the former order Grallæ or Grallatores), which wade in shallow water.
1771. Edwards, E. Indian Bird, in Phil. Trans., LXI. 55. I judged it to be no wader in the water.
1802. Bingley, Anim. Biog. (1813), I. 32. Waders (Grallæ). These have a roundish bill, a fleshy tongue; and the legs of most of the species are long. The principal genera are the Herons, Plovers, Snipes, and Sandpipers.
1851. Richardson, Geol. (1855), 312. 6th Order.—Grallatores (or Waders).
1860. Emerson, Cond. Life, Fate, Wks. (Bohn), II. 325. Ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the sea margin.
1905. Spectator, 13 May, 797/1. Another wader, rather smaller than the redshank,… which the present writer has not been able to identify.
attrib. 1849. H. Miller, Footpr. Creat., xi. (1874), 201. Birds of the wader family.
2. pl. Waterproof boots reaching above the knee, used by anglers for wading.
1841. J. T. J. Hewlett, Peter Priggins, I. i. 30. Mud-boots, waders, and snow-boots.
1883. Fisheries Exhib. Catal., 58. Fishing Waders, very light, requiring no separate Brogues.
1904. Gallichan, Fishing in Spain, 210. Short mackintosh coats to reach the waders will be required.
