leveller

adj

1. (UK, comparative, form-of)comparative form of level: more level

noun

1. (UK)A person or thing that levels.

   “A soil leveller is used to prepare the field before sowing.”

2. (UK)A person or thing that levels.

   “I adjusted the leveller built into each leg of the table, but it still wobbled.”

3. (UK)Something that transcends people’s differences (such as social class, wealth, etc.); something that tends to eliminate advantages and disadvantages.

   “Conversation is not to be met with in large and mixed companies; and a card-table, considered as an universal leveller, may have its use, by placing the weak and timid on a par with the most lively and overbearing.”

   “All the captives, the innocent as well as the guilty, gladly subscribed to the terms; for they found themselves in a temporary duresse which did not admit of any fair argument of the merits of the case, and there is no leveller so effectual as a common misfortune.”

   “Everything about the old man was clean, if coarse; and, with Death, the leveller, so close at hand, it was the labourer who made the first advances, and put out his horny hand to the Squire.”

   “The army is viewed not only as a social leveler but also as a means of unifying a country with three cultures and four languages.”

4. (UK)A person holding a political opinion in favor of eliminating disparities between the haves and the have-nots.

   “Among the independents, who, in general, were for having no eccleſiaſtical ſubordination, a ſet of men grew up called Levellers, who diſallowed all ſubordination whatſoever, and declared that they would have no other chaplain, king, or general, but Chriſt. They declared that all men were equal; that all degrees and ranks should be levelled, and an exact partition of property eſtabliſhed in the nation.”

5. (UK)An equaliser.

   “Cardiff pressed for a leveller to force the tie into penalties, but Stoke comfortably held out and Walters added his second finishing from a tight angle after his first shot was beaten back to him by Heaton.”

6. A member of the Levellers.