1 a sum of money that is paid to sb to make sure they will be available to do work when they are needed:
The agency will pay you a monthly retainer.
2 (BrE) a small amount of rent that you pay for a room, etc. when you are not there in order to keep it available for your use:
Check whether full rent or a retainer is required during vacations.
3 (AmE) a device that keeps a person's teeth straight after they have had ORTHODONTIC treatment with a BRACE
4 (old-fashioned) a servant, especially one who has been with a family for a long time
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for retainer is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is retainer a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, retainer is tagged as noun.
Does retainer appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — retainer appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.