Meaning of spear carrier | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A person in a play or movie with a minimal part; an extra.
2. One who serves in a subordinate or menial role.
   broadly, idiomatic
3. One who plays a leading or substantial role as a supporter, proponent, etc. representing a group, cause, or point of view.
   idiomatic

Examples

“[A]ctors would get annual raises through 2008, when even the lowliest spear carrier will make more than $1,500 a week for being on Broadway.”

“A case sitting quietly in the Supreme Court’s in-basket promises to tell us more than almost any other about John G. Roberts Jr. and his evolution from spear carrier in the Reagan revolution to chief justice of the United States.”

“Britain is now widely dismissed—more often in sorrow than in anger—as just an American spear-carrier without any real force of its own.”

“Reed was the preternaturally boyish spear carrier for the religious right, the brash Evangelical who transformed the Christian Coalition into a populist power center.”

“Why would he do that? Because Hu Yaobang embodied the sense of historical mission in Chinese communism; spent his entire adult life honestly attempting to fulfil that mission; and was the spear carrier, after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, for not only economic, but also political, judicial and cultural reform.”

CEFR level