Retainer

A retainer can be:

a person being part of the retinue (suite, train) of a dignitary etcetera, either performing personal services such as man servant, pageboy, bodyguard, or rather occasionally in proximity such as a minstrel
the part of a contractually due sum that is paid in advance, while the balance will only follow after receipt on the counterpart in goods or services; also called advance payment or deposit
a device in dentistry: Retainer (orthodontic device)
an individual, in civil proceedings, assigned to maintain assets of an organization; for example, in a lawsuit between shareholders, a judge may be asked to replace an executive who holds shares with a retainer if they believe there is a danger of the executive running the company into the ground
One of the 99 Names of God
RFA Retainer (A329), an armament support ship

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.