noun
painter
A person who paints; separately, a rope for securing a boat or a regional name for a cougar.
Where it comes from
Painter ordinarily means a person who paints; separately, a rope for securing a boat or a regional name for a cougar. Painter has three separate dictionary entries: a person who paints; a rope used to secure or tow a boat, from a word connected with hanging; and, in Upper Southern and other regional North American speech, a cougar. The animal word is an alteration of panther. Regional pronunciation reshaped panther into painter, so old accounts of painters in the woods may describe big cats, not artists.
How the meaning developed
The identical spelling hides two other unrelated words, making painter a three-way homonym rather than one word with imaginative metaphorical senses.
Sources
- American Heritage Dictionary Entry: painter
- DCHP-3 Entry: painter
- American Heritage Dictionary Entry: cougar
Definitions adapted from Open English WordNet where applicable. License and attribution. Word-history text comes from Lexifour’s sourced social research; pages are assembled automatically, not individually fact-checked on every update.
Updated 2026-10-05. Report a correction.