Other forms: canisters
A canister is a sealed metal cylinder holding something you would rather keep inside it. The blue gas canister that screws onto a camping stove, a canister of tear gas rolling across a street, the canister inside a fire extinguisher.
The kitchen kind is plainer: a row of canisters on a shelf for flour, sugar and tea, with lids that clip down. What separates a canister from a can is the lid — straight sides and a top that lifts or screws off, so the thing can be opened and shut again. In news reports the word keeps company with gas: a gas canister, a smoke canister, canisters of CS gas. Americans call a cylinder-bodied vacuum cleaner a canister vacuum, where the British say cylinder. The oldest sense is military — canister shot was a tin packed with musket balls, fired from a cannon so that the tin burst apart.
1nouncanisterA sealed metal cylinder holding gas or liquid, often under pressure.
“Screw the canister onto the stove and listen for a hiss.”
2nouncylindricalA cylindrical container with a fitted lid, for storing dry goods.
“The flour lives in the blue canister next to the kettle.”
canister is a container.
Canister arrived in Middle English as canustyr, meaning a basket, from Latin canistrum. English kept the container and let the material change, from woven basket to tin and steel. Canaster and knaster are the same Latin word taking other roads into the language.
Latin
canistrum
Middle English
canustyr — basket
English, today
canister
From Middle English canustyr (“basket”), a borrowing from Latin canistrum. a doublet of canaster and knaster.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Camping & Outdoors, Containers & Packaging