Swearer

Someone who administers an oath.

"I am not a swearer in of people, man."
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1865).

Fine, Unmarked Paper from the Royal Provisioner

The person who maintained storehouses of provisions for the royal household.

"The princess had had scrolls of the holy writ copied for each of the Six Worlds. Genji himself had copied a sutra for her own personal use, and asked in the dedication that, having thus plighted their troth, they be permitted to go hand in hand down the way to the Pure Land. He had also made a copy of the Amitabha Sutra. Fearing that Chinese paper might begin to crumble after frequent use, he had ordered a fine, unmarked paper from the royal provisioner. He had been hard at work since spring and the results quite justified his labors. A glimpse of an unrolled corner was enough to tell the most casual observer that it was a masterpiece. The gilt lines were very good, but the sheen of the black ink and the contrast with the paper were quite marvelous. I shall not attempt to describe the spindle, the cover, and the box, save to say that they were all of superb workmanship. On a new aloeswood stand with flared legs, it occupied a central place beside the holy trinity."

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (11th Century).

[Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.]

Locker

An officer of the Custom House in charge of a locked warehouse.

"Six Lockers at the Tea Warehouses, each earning 30 pounds per annum."

John Chamberlayne, The Present State of Great Britain (1735).

Necromancers

A soothsayer who conjures up or communicates with the dead.

"'I am willing to refer the case to divine arbitration. And here is Zatchlas the Egyptian, one of the leading necromancers of his country, who has undertaken, for a large fee, to recall my nephew's soul from the Underworld and persuade it to reanimate the corpse for a few brief moments.'...The necromancer, yielding to his entreaties, touched the corpse's mouth three times with a certain small herb and laid another on its breast. Then he turned to the east, with a silent prayer to the sacred disk of the rising sun... Presently the breast of the corpse began to heave, blood began to pour again through its veins, breath returned to its nostrils. He sat up and spoke in a querulous voice: 'Why do you call me back to the troubles of this transitory life, when I have already drunk of the stream of Lethe and floated on the marshy waters of the Styx? Leave alone, I say, leave me alone! Let me sleep undisturbed."

Apulieus, The Golden Ass (2nd Century A.D.)

[translated by Robert Graves].

A Tongue-Tied Dumb Brick and Oratory

“I couldn’t quite follow some of it, but anybody could see that it was real ripe stuff, and I was amazed that even the course of treatment he had been taking could have rendered so normally tongue-tied a dumb brick as Gussie capable of it. It just shows, what any member of Parliament will tell you, that if you want real oratory, the preliminary noggin is essential.”

P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves (1934).

Speaking Dutch Fustian

A fustianman is a maker of a kind of coarse cloth made of cotton and flax. Fustian, or "cotton velvet," is a thick, twilled, cotton cloth with a short pile or nap (OED).

"Let thy left eye be diametrically fixed upon my right heel, with quasi vestigis nostris insistere. Clown. God forgive me, he speaks Dutch fustian."

Christopher Marlowe, The tragical history of Doctor Faustus (1590).

Groom-Grubbers

A servant in the king's household who looked after provisions kept in the royal cellar.

"Groom Grubber... His office is to see that the vessels which come into the cellar be tight and full."

Liber Niger in Household Ordinances (1601).

Oysterwives

A woman who shucks and sells oysters.

"On whom gape thine Oysters so wide, oysterwife?"

John Heywood, A dialogue conteynyng proverbs and epigrammes (1562).

Pert as a Pearmonger

A pear dealer.

"Here pricketh forth this hasty Defender, as pert as a pearmonger."

Thomas Harding, A Confutation of a booke by Bishop Jewel, intituled An apologie of the Church of England (1565).

Bank Cashier

The person who takes in and doles out money in a bank.

“I have the fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury. There is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself that I cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands. And if he and I should live to be a hundred I could still do it... I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer.”

Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894).

A Caliph and the Room of the Tree

The head of a Moslem state.

"In his description of the reception of a Byzantine embassy by the Caliph al-Muqtadir in 917, the historian of Baghdad, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (1002-71), evokes the splendour of the court and its ceremonial. Having been taken into the presence of the caliph, they were then by his command shown the palace: the halls, courts and parks, the soldiers, eunuchs, chamberlains and pages, the treasures in the store-chambers, elephants caparisoned in peacock-silk brocade. In the Room of the Tree, they saw a 'tree, standing in the midst of a great circular tank filled with clear water. The tree has eighteen branches, every branch having numerous twigs, on which sit all sorts of gold and silver birds, both large and small. Most of the branches of this tree are of silver, but some are of gold, and they spread into the air carrying leaves of different colours. The leaves of the tree move as the wind blows, while the birds pipe and sing.'"

Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (1991).

Name Callers

Nomenclator: (from Latin for “name caller”).

In ancient Rome, a servant or dependent whose business it was to inform his master or patron of the names of persons, especially when engaged in canvassing for office; a steward or usher who assigned or indicated the places of guests at a banquet (OED).

“But if influencing people and keeping in the public eye/
Constitutes bliss, let’s buy us a slave to stand by/
And tell us their names, give us a dig in the ribs,/
And hustle us across the street to shake their hands:/
‘He has pull with the Fabians. This man’s a wheel with the Velines/
This fellow can make you a consul or judge, or break you,/
If he feels in the mood.’ When you reach out your hand for their vote,/
Say ‘brother’ or ‘father’—adopt your constituent, adapting/
Your words to his age.”

Horace, Epistle to Numicius, (1st Century B.C.)

Scale of 1 to 10: 6. As a memory expert, your worth is minted in inverse proportion to your patron’s forgetfulness.

Raftsmen

"Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the ax flash and come down--you don't hear nothing; you see that ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!--it had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits...."

Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1884).

Alone Among Modern Dictators

"It is true that Napoleon perfected several features of modern totalitarianism, economic warfare, mass propaganda, and other deplorable innovations: he marched with events, as he put it. But it is not from these things that his myth has sprung. He captured the imagination of those who harked back to--or looked forward to a return of--the gods and heroes of the ancient world. Alone among modern dictators he conquered mankind not by preaching systems and ideologies, not by speeches and demagoguery, not (though he used them) by terror and secret police--but by the sheer magnetism of his personality, by the concentrated application of his mind, by the infectious boldness of his ventures."

J. Christopher Herold, The Mind of Napoleon (1955).

The Crash of the Speculator

Something ventured, nothing gained.

"Lundi, j'achetai des actions;
Mardi, je gagnai des millions;
Mercredi, j'arrangeai mon ménage,
Jeudi, je pris un équipage,
Vendredi, je m'en fus au bal,
Et Samedi, à l'hopital."

(Monday, je bought some shares;
Tuesday, I became a millionaire;
Wednesday, I fixed up my ménage;
Thursday, I took a horse and carriage;
Friday, I went to dance at a ball,
And Saturday, to the hospital.)

--Popular epigram following the collapse of the French financial markets and entire financial system in 1720.

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, "The Mississippi Scheme" (1841).

Jolly as a Sand-boy

"The urchins who drive the sand-laden neddies through our streets, are envied by the capon-eating turtle-loving epicures of these cities. 'As jolly as a sand-boy,' designates a merry fellow who has tasted a drop."

John Badcock, Slang. A dictionary of the turf (1823).

Prescott on Incan Oracles

In Greek and Roman Antiquity, the instrumentality, agency, or medium, by which a god was supposed to speak or make known his will. (OED)

"The temple of Pachacamac continued to maintain its ascendancy; and the oracles, delivered from its dark and mysterious shrine, were held in no less repute among the natives than the oracles of Delphi obtained among the Greeks."

William Prescott, The Conquest of the Incas (1847).

Cato on Overseers

One who oversees or superintends other workers. A supervisor.

"Cato is much more precise than Xenophon. He calculates that thirteen people are necessary to work an estate of 240 jugera (150 acres) planted with olive trees: one overseer to supervise the work, a housekeeper, five agricultural labourers, three carters, one donkey driver, one swineherd and one shepherd. For a vineyard of 100 jugera, he suggests, apart from the overseer and the housekeeper, ten labourers, one carter, one man for the donkeys, one man to supervise the grape harvest, one swineherd--altogether eighteen people. This figure does not include the extra hands hired temporarily for the busiest periods, such as the grape-pickers, vindemiatores, who are mentioned in inscriptions. Thus the permanent labour force of the estate remains relatively small."

Claude Mossé, The Ancient World of Work (1969)

[Translated by Janet Lloyd].

Princes and Grooms

"They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom."

--Ben Jonson.

Auri sacra fames

"Money: The root of all evil. Auri sacra fames. The god of the day (not to be confused with Apollo). Cabinet ministers call it an emolument, notaries a charge, doctors a fee, employees a salary, workers a wage, domestics their hire. Money doesn't make for happiness."

Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Platitudes (1880).
[Translation by J. I. Rodale (1954).]

(The Latin quotation, 'accursed greed for gold', is from Vergil's Aeneid, Book III, line 57.)

Proust on Doctors

"Illness is the most heeded of doctors:
to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey."

--Marcel Proust.

Hucksters

Someone who retails small goods. A broker. A middleman.

"So are some men deceivers and liars like the craftsmen. The shoemaker saith: 'See, these are two most excellent soles'; and he hath burned them before the fire, and lieth and cheateth thee of thy money. And the baker floods his dough with yeast, so that thou, who dreamest to have bought bread, thou has bought mere air for bread. And the huxter pours beer sometimes, or water, into his oil; and the butcher will sell calves' flesh at times, saying: 'It is three weeks old': and it is scarce a week old...."

Berthold von Regensburg, "Tricks of Trade," Sermons (13th century).

Underminers

A sapper. Someone who digs beneath a structure, weakening it to the point of collapse.

"Blesse our poore Virginity from underminers and blowers up."

William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1601).

Thoreau on a Canadian Woodchopper

A lumberjack.

"Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man,--he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here,--A Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught... When I approached him he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at any thing which made him think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees he would exclaim,--'By George! I can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; I want no better sport.'"

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854).

Dealers in Poison

A chemist who specializes in the secret ingredient that sends cruel husbands and wealthy aunts "to their last long sleep."

"In a few months afterwards [in 1659], nine women more were hanged for poisoning; and another bevy, including many young and beautiful girls, were whipped half naked through the streets of Rome. This severity did not put a stop to the practice, and jealous women and avaricious men, anxious to step into the inheritance of fathers, uncles, and brothers, resorted to poison. As it was quite free from taste, colour, and smell, it was administered without exciting suspicion. The skilful vendors compounded it of different degrees of strength, so that the poisoners had only to say whether they wanted their victims to die in a week, a month, or six months, and they were suited with corresponding doses. The vendors were chiefly women, of whom the most celebrated was a hag named Tophania, who was in this way accessory to the death of upwards of six hundred persons. This woman appears to have been a dealer in poisons from her girlhood, and resided first at Palermo and then at Naples."

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, "The Slow Poisoners" (1841).

Waster

A thief. "The designation of a class of thieves mentioned along with 'Roberdesmen' and 'Drawlatches' in a statute of Edw. III." (OED).

"It shall never be said whilst I am Bailiff of Southampton, that any waster, riever, drawlatch or murtherer came scathless away from me and my posse."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, White Company (1890).

Panter

A baker. The person in a household who ran the pantry and made sure there was a sufficient supply of bread.

“The kyng took his pantelere, & strangled him right there.”
Robert Manning Brunne, Langtoft’s Chronicle (1338).

Scale of 1 to 10: 6. No loafing, work begins each day before dawn.

Fire-Eater

A juggler who eats or pretends to eat fire. (Also the nickname for someone who is able to do a great amount of work in a very short time.)

“Richardson, the famous Fire-eater before us devour’d brimstone on glowing coales, chewing and swallowing them.” John Evelyn, Diary (1700).

Scale of 1 to 10: 2. That’s entertainment. Painfully steep learning curve.

Diviner

Someone who foretells the future. A soothsayer.

"Waiting with them were some pilgrims bound for the Great Shrine at Ise, a hardware merchant from Osaka, a dealer in lacquer from Nara, a Buddhist priest from the monastery at Daigo, a tea-set seller from Takayama, a mosquito-net peddler from Tamba, a clothing merchant from Kyoto, and a diviner from the shrine at Kashima. What makes travel on a ferry so interesting is the fact that all the passengers come from different places.” Ihara Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love (1686).

Scale of 1 to 10: 5. People tend to hang on your every word. You can’t help but become aware of your own fraudulence.

Count of the Sacred Largesses

The chief treasurer in ancient Rome.

“The extraordinary title of count of the sacred largesses, was bestowed on the treasurer general of the revenue.” Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781).

Scale of 1 to 10: 6. A position of great trust. Would be more desirable occupation if the largesses belonged to the count. Will eventually engender a fatal bitterness in the soul and larceny in the heart.

Berserk

(From “bear coat”) A Norse warrior who wore a bear coat, drank tea made with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and then went berserk--in battle--fighting with what was called the “berserker rage.”

“Out of terrible Druids and Berserkers, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Miscellanies (1855).

Scale of 1 to 10: 5. Why be loved when you can go berserk and be awe-inspiring...

Oeconomus

The person who manages the monetary matters for a religious society. The steward of a college. Directly related to the modern words “economy,” "economical," “economist,” etc. (Originally from the ancient Greek word for “house”).

“All the Alms, and all the Revenues were kept in common, under the Care of the Deacons, and Oeconomi.” Dupin’s New Ecclesiastical History of the 17th Century (1725).

Scale of 1 to 10: 7. It may be a house of God, but its eggs and nails and linen come from the world of Mammon, and that’s where the oeconomus comes in.

An Infamous Set of Engrossers

The term "grocer" originally came from "grosser," that is, someone who bought items by the gross or in large quantities. The term "engrosser" is related, deriving from the French expression "en gros," and meaning someone who buys "in bulk." But "engrosser" has a loathsome additional meaning.

Engrossers are people who have enough money to buy land or basic necessities in such large quantities that they can temporarily monopolize a market. Pockets already lined with money, they want more. They are would-be monopolists, who dream of making ungodly profits, excited (or at least untroubled) by any pain they inflict. Modern day engrossers are too numerous to mention.

“Ingrossers of tenamentes and landes, throughe whose covetousnes, villages decaye and fall downe.” Hugh Latimer, The fyrst sermon preached before Edward VI (1549).

“An artificial scarcity, created in the midst of plenty, by an infamous set of engrossers.”
R. H. Lee in Jared Sparks’ Correspondence of the American Revolution (1778).

Scale of 1 to 10: 6. If you don’t mind being despised, a path to riches.

Staff Officers

Someone with an office of significant responsibility in the household of the king or queen. A state minister, who carries a white staff.

"Staff Officers are such as in the King's Presence bear a white Staff. At other times, going abroad, have a white Staff Borne before them by a Footman bare-headed. Such are the Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, Lord Treasurer, etc."

Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia (1728).