Other forms: stretchers
A stretcher is the carried bed used to move an injured person. Carry a stretcher, on a stretcher, a stretcher party.
The simplest is two poles and a sheet of canvas; the modern kind is a scoop that splits lengthways so it can be slid under somebody without rolling them, which matters when a spine may be broken. It takes four people to carry a stretcher any distance.
1nounstretcherA carried bed for moving an injured person.
“The injured player was carried off the pitch on a stretcher.”
stretcher is a piece of equipment.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)treg-
Proto-West Germanic
*strakkjan — to stretch, make taut or tight
Old English
streċċan — to stretch, hold out, extend, spread out, prostrate
Middle English
strecchen
English
stretch
English, today
stretcher
Built from
From stretch + -er. stretch comes from Middle English strecchen, from Old English streċċan (“to stretch, hold out, extend, spread out, prostrate”), from Proto-West Germanic strakkjan (“to stretch, make taut or tight”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)treg-, streg-, treg- (“stiff, rigid”). Cognate with West Frisian strekke, Dutch strekken (“to stretch, straighten”), German strecken (“to stretch, straighten, elongate”), Danish strække (“to stretch”), Swedish sträcka (“to stretch”), Dutch strak (“taut, tight”), Albanian shtriqem (“to stretch”). More at stark.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA