Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A medieval European pilgrim who carried a palm branch as a token of having visited the Holy Land.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A pilgrim who had returned from the Holy Land, had fulfilled his vow, and had brought with him a palm-branch to be deposited on the altar of his parish church; hence, an itinerant monk who went from shrine to shrine, under a perpetual vow of poverty and celibacy. The distinction between pilgrim and palmer seems never to have been closely observed.
  • noun A palmer-worm.
  • noun An artificial fly whose body is covered with hairs bristling in all directions: used by anglers.
  • noun A wood-louse.
  • noun A palm-tree.
  • noun One who palms or cheats, as at cards.
  • noun A ferule.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who palms or cheats, as at cards or dice.
  • noun A wandering religious votary; especially, one who bore a branch of palm as a token that he had visited the Holy Land and its sacred places.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A pilgrim who had been to the Holy Land and who brought back a palm branch in signification.
  • noun One who palms or cheats, as at cards or dice.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun United States golfer (born in 1929)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from palm (“the type of tree”) +‎ -er.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the transitive verb to palm.

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