RETAINER • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Retainer

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/rɪtˈeɪnər/ /ritˈeɪnər/ Listen

noun

Retainer n.

One who, or that which, retains.

One who is retained or kept in service; an attendant; an adherent; a hanger-on.

Hence, a servant, not a domestic, but occasionally attending and wearing his master's livery.

(Law)

(a)

The act of a client by which he engages a lawyer or counselor to manage his cause.

(b)

The act of withholding what one has in his hands by virtue of some right.

(c)

A fee paid to engage a lawyer or counselor to maintain a cause, or to prevent his being employed by the opposing party in the case; called also retaining fee.

The act of keeping dependents, or the state of being in dependence.

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Etymology of 'Retainer'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Retainer" Quotes from Famous Books

... habitual look of servitude—he was no longer a partner, but a mere retainer, with a half-comic resignation in ...

— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... him a retainer, who was as much like many of the characters in Gil Blas as his master. He called himself a private secretary, though there was no writing for him to do, and he lived in the steerage with the carpenter and sailmaker. He was certainly ...

— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... at this meeting of friends and celebrities. The Boston atmosphere as a whole was not altogether delightful. He seemed constrained, but he did a fine stroke of business. James R. Osgood & Co. offered him ten thousand dollars for whatever he might write in a year, and he accepted the handsome retainer. It did not stimulate him to remarkable output. He wrote four stories, including "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar," and five poems, including "Concepcion de Arguello." The offer was not renewed the ...

— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... any particular friendship or amity in the pair, but rather a mutual antagonism and suspicion. Mrs. Peyton, coldly polite to Clarence's former COMPANION, but condescendingly gracious to his present TENANT and retainer, did not notice it, preoccupied with the annoyance and pain of Susy's frequent references to the old days ...

— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... even if I should not live to see it. I have at least seen Romilly shivered, who was one of the assassins. When that felon or lunatic ... was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch, and blossoms—when, after taking my retainer, he went over to them [see Letters, 1899, iii. 324]—when he was bringing desolation ... on my household gods—did he think that, in less than three years, a natural event—a severe, domestic, but an unexpected and common calamity—would ...

— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

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