Thief

Someone who ignores property rights and wrongs.

"But what do men seek from these saints except what belongs to folly? Amongst all the votive offerings you see covering the walls of certain churches right up to the very roof, have you ever seen one put up for an escape from folly or for the slightest gain in wisdom? One man escaped drowning, another was run through by his enemy and survived, another boldly (and equally fortunately) fled from battle and left his fellows to continue the fight. Another fell down from the gallows, thanks to some saint who befriends thieves, and went on to relieve a good many people of their burden of wealth. This one broke out of prison, that one recovered from a fever, to the annoyance of his doctors; yet another swallowed poison, but it acted as a purge and did him good instead of killing him--a waste of effort and money for his wife, who was not at all pleased. Another upset his wagon but drove his horses home unhurt, another escaped with his life when his house collapsed, and another was caught in the act by a husband but got away. Not one of them gives thanks for being rid of folly, and it's so pleasant not to be wise that mortals would prefer to pray for deliverance from anything rather than from me."

Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].

Statesman

A politician who talks a good game.

“Through all the employments of life,

Each neighbour abuses his brother;

Whore and rogue, they call husband and wife;

All professions be-rogue one another.

The priest calls the lawyer a cheat;

The lawyer be-knaves the divine;

And the statesman, because he’s so great,

Thinks his trade as honest as mine.”

John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728).

Shifter

A scene changer in the theater.

"Two or three shifters of scenes, with the two candle-snuffers, make up a compleat body of Guards upon the English stage."

Joseph Addison, The Spectator No. 42 (1711).

Monopolist

Someone whose fondest dream is to corner a market and dictate the price.

"We know what monopolists are: men who want to keep a trade all to themselves, under the pretence that they'll furnish the public with a better article."

George Eliot, Felix Holt (1866).

Bread-master

The person in charge of the noble loaves, crusts, and crumbs.

“The functions or groupings, which the Middle Ages designated by the words ‘estate’ and ‘order,’ are of very diverse natures. There are, first of all, the estates of the realm, but there are also the trades, the state of matrimony and that of virginity, the state of sin. At court there are the ‘four estates of body and mouth’: bread-masters, cup-bearers, carvers, and cooks. In the Church there are sacerdotal orders and monastic orders. Finally, there are the different orders of chivalry. That which, in medieval thought, establishes unity in the very dissimilar meanings of the word, is the conviction that every one of these groupings represents a divine institution, an element of the organism of Creation emanating from the will of God, constituting an actual entity, and being, at bottom, as venerable as the angelic hierarchy.”

J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).

Bailiff

A steward working for a landholder. A judge or jailer on a ship.

"The economy of the latifundia was quite different. It began to be developed in the second century B.C. in the south of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and later in North Africa. It was, in part, the result of the conquests and the immense influx of wealth and manpower which submerged Italy and later the entire West. We know it chiefly through literary descriptions. Its development usually involved some changing over from arboriculture to pastoral farming, and in certain regions such as Sicily or North Africa it led to large-scale grain production aimed at supplying the Italian markets. These were immense estates of many hundreds of acres and were owned by members of the Roman aristocracy, the great senatorial families. A number of these estates were later confiscated and passed into the hands of the emperor after the civil wars, to form the core of the great imperial domains of the second century A.D. At the same time the large private holdings, upon which the power of the Roman aristocracy depended right up till the end of the Empire, did not disappear--witness the estates of Symmachus or of Saint Melania at the beginning of the fifth century. Needless to say, the owner of such domains as these, which often included land in various provinces, did not reside on his estates. All he did was pocket the income which his bailiffs turned over to him. These bailiffs were very much more important people than the overseers of Cato's De Agricultura. Likewise, the slaves who worked on these estates were not counted in tens, but in hundreds or thousands. Most of them came from the East, prisoners of war or human cattle bought in the Aegean markets, especially at Delos, where, according to Strabo, as many as 10,000 slaves could be turned over in a day."

Claude Mossé, The Ancient World of Work (1969)

[Translated by Janet Lloyd].

Bookkeeper

A juggler.

"Melancholy ghosts of departed book-keepers, who had fallen dead at the desk."

Charles Dickens, American notes for general circulation (1842).

Biographer

A historian who writes biographies, trying to make sense of the lives of real people, whether living or dead at the time.

"An important and distinctive type of Islamic writing sprang from an impulse similar to that which led to the giving of ijazas: the biographical dictionary. Its origin is to be found in the collection of hadiths. In order to verify a hadith, it was necessary to know who had transmitted it, and from whom he had himself learned it; it was important to be sure that the transmission had been continuous, but also that those who had transmitted it were honest and reliable. Gradually the collection of biographies was extended from the narrators of hadiths to other groups--legal scholars, doctors, Sufi masters, and so on."

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

Whiffler

A guard armed with a javelin, battle-axe, sword, or staff, and who wears a chain and keeps the way clear for a procession or public spectacle (OED).

"The deep-mouth'd Sea, Which like a mightie Whiffler 'fore the King, Seemes to prepare his way."

William Shakespeare, Henry V (1599).

Padder

A robber on foot. A footpad. A highwayman.

"If she had stirred out of doors, there were Whipsters abroad, i' faith, padders of maidenheads."

John Dryden and the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Martin Mar-all, or the feigned innocence (1667).

Preacher

“After Olivier Maillard had been preaching Lenten sermons at Orléans, the roofs of the houses surrounding the place whence he had addressed the people had been so damaged by the spectators who had climbed on to them, that the roofer sent in a bill for repairs extending over sixty-four days.”

J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).

Editor

Someone who lends writers undeserved reputations for wit or idiocy.

Apologist

Someone paid to defend the indefensible.

"Thus pleads the devil's fair apologist."

Edward Young, Love of Fame (1728).

Courtier

Someone who is part of a king or queen's entourage. One with an aptitude for flattering, stroking, and amusing those in power. A hanger-on.

"This again addeth to the courtiers' misery, that if the king have promised to stay anywhere, and especially if the herald have publicly proclaimed this as the royal will, then be sure that he will set out at daybreak, mocking all men's expectation by his sudden change of purpose.

Whereby it cometh frequently to pass that such courtiers as have let themselves be bled, or have taken some purgative, must yet follow their prince forthwith without regard to their own bodies, and, setting their life on the hazard of a die, hasten blindfold to ruin for dread of losing that which they have not, nor never shall have."

Peter of Blois, 14th Letter (12th century).

Pannier-man

A fish seller who brings his goods to market in a large basket known as a pannier. The officer in the Inns of Court, who brought provisions back from the market using a horse and panniers.

"If the pannier-man's jack was ever better known by his loins of mutton, I'll be flayed."

Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair (1614).

Rifler

A robber, plunderer, or spoiler.

"The riflers committed depredations on the most irreproachable persons, when any booty was to be got."

Thomas Carte, A general history of England (1750).

Knouter

A flogger who used a knotted whip, called a knout, to whip condemned criminals (especially in Russia).

“A gigantic creature, solidly made and black bearded to the waist, Ivan once had the honor of serving as official knouter to the Great White Tsar.”

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010).

Jester

A comic.

"Now whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly. In fact, if there's no one there to raise a laugh with his folly, genuine or assumed, they have to bring on a 'jester', one who's paid for the job, or invite some absurd hanger-on whose laughable, that is, foolish, remarks will banish silence and gloom from the company. What was the point of loading the stomach with all those delicacies, fancy dishes, and titbits if the eyes and ears and the whole mind can't be fed as well on laughter, jokes, and wit?"

Erasmus, Praise of Folly, (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].

Economist

A practitioner of a form of voodoo known as the “dismal science.”

“What is the appropriate punishment for financial swindling, a white-collar crime? As an economist, I am not qualified to discuss such an issue. However, I cannot forebear from calling attention to one punishment suggested, or at least mentioned, three times. At the time of the South Sea bubble, one member of the House of Commons, Molesworth, in a speech that Carswell says was thought absurd at the time, considered that Parliament should declare the directors of the South Sea Company guilty of parricide and subject them to the ancient Roman punishment for that transgression—to be sewn into sacks, each with a monkey and a snake, and drowned.”

Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes (1989).

Swindler

A fraud. Someone who cheats people of their money without having to resort to violence. A white-collar criminal.

“Cynics may share the belief of W. C. Fields that ‘You can’t cheat an honest man’ and that victims of swindles have mainly themselves to blame. Mundus vult decipi—ergo decipitatur: the world wants to be deceived, let it therefore be deceived. In the view of psychiatry, I am told, swindler and victim are bound together in a symbiotic, love-hate relationship that both find satisfaction in and depend on.”

Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes (1989).

Sticker

Someone who slaughters pigs with a knife or pries oysters open.

"Master Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark, or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker."

Hood, Sk. Road, Sudden Death Wks. (1833).

Groom Porter

The court official in charge of gambling tables.

"By and by I met with Mr. Brisband, and having it in my mind this Christmas to go to see the manner of the gaming at the Groome-Porter's I did tell Brisband of it, and he did lead me thither: where, after staying an hour, they begun to play at about eight at night, where to see how differently one man took his losing from another, one cursing and swearing, and another only muttering and grumbling to himself, a third without any apparent discontent at all; to see how the dice will run good luck in one hand for half an hour together, and another have no good luck at all;... and lastly, to see the formality of the groome-porter, who is their judge of all disputes in play and all quarrels that may arise therein, and how his under-officers are there to observe true play at each table, and to give new dice, is a consideration I never could have thought had been in the world, had I not now seen it."

Samuel Pepys, Diary (January 1, 1668).

Corrodian

Someone who receives a pension of room, board, and other bare necessities upon retiring from the King's service.

"Since he tells us he had married for love, not for money, he and his wife lived as best they might in their 'smale cote', Hoccleve working by day at the office, and when hard pressed writing a poem in hope of reward. His youthful excesses seem to have damaged his health for a time, and for some five years he suffered from a 'wyld infirmyte' and was out of his mind. He recovered, and with sight impaired and mind enfeebled he struggled on until, after thirty-six years' service, in 1424, he was granted 'such sustenance yearly during his life in the Priory of Southwick, Hants, as Nicholas Mokknge, late master of St Lawrence in the Poultry, had'. The king was able to quarter him on the Priory in this manner since, in accordance with medieval practice, he had the right to pension off one of his servants in this way from time to time and the Priory was forced to find suitable accommodation for the corrodian, as he was called, as well as food, amenities and clothing. Unfortunately we do not know the details of Hoccleve's corrody, but in common with many others of the period we may assume that it provided lodging within or close to the precincts of the monastery for Hoccleve and his wife, together with a fixed daily allowance of ale and bread, and a dish of flesh or fish according to the day and season. In addition there were his allowances of wood and candles, yearly robes for himself and his wife and possibly a small grant of money."

Six Medieval Men & Women, "Thomas Hoccleve," H. S. Bennett (1955).

Catgut Spinner

Paradoxically, someone who uses the intestines of sheep, horse, or ass to make strings for musical instruments.

"William Burridge, Catgut-spinner."

London Gazette (1723).

Abbreviator

Someone who abbreviates, abridges, or shortens writing. An editor. An officer in the court of Rome, appointed as assistant to the vice-chancellor for drawing up the pope's briefs, and reducing petitions, when granted, into proper form for being converted into bulls (OED).

"The earliest mention made of abbreviators in the papal court is in one of the extravagantes of John XXII in 1317."

Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences (1751).

Bargain-Hunter

Generally, an expert who has more time than money. A scavenger. Someone who picks over the remains of bankrupt enterprises, hoping to find something of value—for next to nothing.

“Indeed, one of the liveliest spots downtown in 1934 was a place called the ‘securities graveyard’—a room on Vesey Street where the auctioneering firm of Adrian H. Muller & Son regularly conducted public sales of huge blocks of worthless stock in bankrupt companies. A band of seedy bargain-hunters—the flotsam of wild optimism floating on the dark sea of depression—frequented the place, bidding minuscule sums for hundreds of thousands of shares that they hoped might somehow, sometime, be miraculously recalled to life. One of the band, an Englishman named Harold Deighton, always ritually bid one dollar for every lot offered, a hundred shares of this ruined company, a thousand shares of that. Sometimes his was the winning bid; but he never got rich."

John Brooks, Once in Golconda (1970).

Distiller

Someone who distills hard liquor.

“All through the years of Prohibition, the favorite bootleg drink in the New Jersey hills where he had his country estate was ‘Jersey Lightning,’ a harsh but authoritative applejack that had been distilled locally for generations before Prohibition and, of course, had continued to be produced massively though inconspicuously in those well-wooded hills and valleys—then still remarkably remote and unpopulated—without the blessing of law. Incredibly (or so we can say in hindsight), this urbane and sophisticated man came to believe that after repeal Jersey Lightning would capture the fancy of the whole country, and become a standard national drink like Scotch or bourbon; and to make it a still more attractive investment prospect, the stuff had the great commercial advantage of requiring very little aging to be potable, or as potable as it would ever be.”

John Brooks, Once in Golconda (1970).

Scullion

A domestic servant of the lowest rank in a household, performing menial tasks in the kitchen, such as scrubbing and cleaning.

"Away you Scullion, you Rampallian, you Fustillirian."

Shakespeare, Henry IV (1597).

Prytanis

A chief official or magistrate. A member of one of the ten sections into which the Athenian senate of five hundred was divided. Each section held the presidency of the senate for about one tenth of the year (Webster's).

"Now I observe that when we are met together in the assembly, and the matter in hand relates to building, the builders are summoned as advisers; when the question is one of ship-building, then the ship-wrights; and the like of other arts which they think capable of being taught and learned. And if some person offers to give them advice who is not supposed by them to have any skill in the art, even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble, they will not listen to him, but laugh and hoot at him, until either he is clamoured down and retires of himself; or if he persist, he is dragged away or put out by the constables at the command of the prytanes. This is their way of behaving about professors of the arts.

But when the question is an affair of state, then everybody is free to have a say--carpenter, tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high and low--any one who likes gets up, and no one reproaches him, as in the former case, with not having learned, and having no teacher, and yet giving advice; evidently because they are under the impression that this sort of knowledge cannot be taught. And not only is this true of the state, but of individuals; the best and wisest of our citizens are unable to impart their political wisdom to others: as for example, Pericles, the father of these young men, who gave them excellent instruction in all that could be learned from masters, in his own department of politics neither taught them, nor gave them teachers; but they were allowed to wander at their own free will in a sort of hope that they would light upon virtue of their own accord."

Plato, Protagoras (4th century B.C.)

[translated by Benjamin Jowett].

Helot

Serfs in ancient Sparta. Attached to the estates of the so-called "Spartiates," they had to share their harvest with the aforesaid landowners.

"The Spartan constitution depended upon social relations established once and for all: the 'Equals' each received an allotment of land cultivated by helots belonging to the community. These allotments were inalienable and nothing, in theory, could alter the original distribution made by the legendary Lycurgus. In actual fact, Spartan 'communism' was theoretical rather than real. The city would have had to cut itself off from the rest of the Greek world in order to maintain it. This was hardly possible, and from the fourth century B.C. onwards Sparta was the scene of disturbances caused by an increasingly unequal distribution of the land; in the third century attempts at 'revolution' even involved the helots. Needless to say, these proved abortive, and the Roman conquest of Greece in the second century ensured that they would remain impossible in the future."

Claude Mossé, The Ancient World of Work

[translated by Janet Lloyd] (1969).

Heaver

A stevedore. A dock worker who loads and unloads goods from ships.

"Labourers of the lowest class, ballast heavers, coal whippers."

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1839).

Palmister

Someone who makes a living by telling people’s characters and fortunes by examining the palms of their hands. A chiromancer.

"It was then most of all that the idea of his being fated impressed itself on me, because it really seemed as though the giant were reading his own dreadful destiny in his hands, like a palmist, except that it was not written there in fine lines but carved in thick grease, in power cables, black brutal and irresistible.”

Michel Tournier, Gemini (1975).

Envoy

A messenger. A diplomat. Someone who is sent.

"One Musonius Rufus, a man of equestrian rank, strongly attached to the pursuit of philosophy and to the tenets of the Stoics, had joined the envoys. He mingled with the troops, and enlarging on the blessings of peace and the perils of war, began to admonish the armed crowd. Many thought it ridiculous; more thought it tiresome; some were ready to throw him down and trample him under foot, had he not yielded to the warnings of the more orderly and the threats of others, and ceased to display his ill-timed wisdom."

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD).

Stone Cutter

Someone who carves or cuts stone, shapes stone, or inscribes it.

“To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine—who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle—I am indebted for a belief religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.”

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861).

Speculators

People who incur some risk buying and selling securities for their own account.

“As John T. Flynn was to put it a few years later, ‘The game of speculation is one played by some three or four thousand insiders and some half a million outsiders on terms of complete inequality.’ The outsiders, he said, ‘are permitted to see only a part of their own cards while their professional adversaries have access to the cards of all the players as well as their own.’”

John Brooks, Once in Golconda (1970).

A Kind of an Attorney

A legal advocate. Originally French, for someone one "turns to."

"Thence to Sir G. Carteret at his lodgings, who I perceive is mightily displeased with this new Treasury; and he hath reason, for it will eclipse him. He says, and I believe, that a great many persons at Court are angry at the rise of this Duncomb. He was a kind of an attorney: but for all this I believe this man will be a great man, in spite of all. Late to supper, and with great quiet to bed; finding by the balance of my account that I am creditor 6,900 pounds, for which the Lord of Heaven be praised!"

Samuel Pepys, Diary (May 31, 1667).

Maunderer

A beggar.

"I am a maunderer upon the pad I confesse."

Thomas Middleton & T. Dekker, The Roaring Girle, or Moll Cut purse (1611).

Dragoon

A soldier on horse who dismounted to fight, armed with a gun that spits fire (like a dragon).

"These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious Dragoons, the sons of greedy and ferocious pirates."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (1856).

Ratcatcher

An exterminator of rats. Someone whose job is to catch rats.

"Societies for the suppression of vice: Beginning with the best intentions in the world, such societies must in all probability degenerate into a receptacle for every species of tittle-tattle, impertinence and malice. Men whose trade is rat-catching love to catch rats; the bug-destroyer seizes on his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice. The last soon becomes a mere tradesman like the others; none of them moralize, or lament that their respective evils should exist in the world. The public feeling is swallowed up in the pursuit of a daily occupation, and in the display of a technical skill."

--Sydney Smith.

A Paltry Alderman

A local magistrate. A warden of a guild.

"He was a pirate with a tremendous and sanguinary history; and as long as he preserved upspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his name and the grandeur of his ancient calling, homage and reverence were his from high and low; but when at last he descended into politics and became a paltry alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept. When he died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he has come into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman. To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably forget what he became."

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883).

Hand

Anyone who performs some sort of manual labor (i.e., manipulates matter with the hands; works with one's hands). Also, a sailor.

"Near 2,000 hands are said to be employed here in the manufactory of shalloons, tammies and serges."

English Gazette (1778).

Smith or Farrier

One who shoes horses. A horse doctor.

"An excellent Smith or Farryer who shall ever be furnished with Horseshoes, nayles, and drugges, both for inward and outward applycations."

Francis Markham, Five decades of epistles of Warre 1632.

Roofer

Someone who repairs or constructs roofs.

“I’ve had to dig with my fingernails for a living. What can anybody do without capital? What they can do I can do but it’s not much. I fix what’s broken—except in the heart. In this shtetl everything is falling apart—who bothers with leaks in his roof if he’s peeking through the cracks to spy on God? And who can pay to have it fixed let’s say he wants it, which he doesn’t. If he does, half the time I work for nothing. If I’m lucky, a dish of noodles. Opportunity here is born dead.”

Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (1966).

Ice-Cream Seller

“’There’s some one who’s pleased with himself,” she thought, as she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived his mistake. ‘He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as any one in the world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice-cream, that they do know for certain,’ she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice-cream seller, who took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring face with a towel.’We all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then dirty ice.’” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877).

Kerouac on the Satrap

Under the ancient Persian monarchy, a governor of one of the provinces. A subordinate ruler.

"CODY: There was then talk of a certain Roger Boncoeur who started at Cape Cod, Provincetown Bohemian summers, walking the roads by night; and ended walking all over America in the night with a candle in his hand; later he went mad, or it simplified itself into something practical like a brakeman's lantern and some walking shoes and gear; or, really now, I can't tell; then his kid brother was it? Ben Boncoeur, that with fevered brow came runnning back from Mexico in dusty coaches of the Ferrocarril Mexicano, with a bomber like a hyacinth bough wrapped around his sculptured waits, waist, like a seraph, a satrap, a molasses black strap, a roach to kill a vulture, a mighty boomblast joint, the hugest hunk of Swaziland boom ever assembled in the history of the Paleontological Museum, or was it the Herbivorous? no, the, why of course, the goddamned, ah, the damn, old, museum there, you know the one I--the Botanical Gardens swimmingpool or whatever, the Botany Tie, the Botany Too, the Botanical Weed Garden and now everybody's left me fuddling in my own foolish thoughts, well that's all I've got left and if the Lord will be patient I shall again try to resume my narrative without suffering everyone to terrible and foolified hangups."

Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody (1951).

Mahajun

A moneylender, banker, or merchant.

"Down there lives a Mahajun--my father gave him a bill,

I have paid the knave thrice over, and here I'm paying him still.

He shows me a long stamp paper, and must have my land--must he?

If I were twenty years younger, he should get six feet by three"

A. C. Lyall, Old Pindaree (1861).

Mountebank

A hawker of quack medicines and nostrums who attracts customers with stories, jokes, or tricks (American Heritage).

"Along with them

They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,

A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,

a living dead man. This pernicious slave,

Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,

And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,

And with no face, as 'twere, out-facing me,

Cries out, I was possessed."

William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (1594).

Conductor

The person who ran the public baths in ancient Rome.

"Antonius from his success and high reputation was observed of all. He had hastened to the baths to wash off the blood; and when he found fault with the temperature of the water, an answer was heard, 'that it would soon be warm enough.' Thus the words of a slave brought on him the whole odium of having given the signal for firing the town, which was indeed already in flames."

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD).

Poet

"Even the stoics don't despise pleasure, though they are careful to conceal their real feelings, and tear it to pieces in public with their incessant outcry, so that once they have frightened everyone else off they can enjoy it more freely themselves. I'd just like them to tell me if there's any part of life which isn't dreary, unpleasant, graceless, stupid, and tedious unless you add pleasure, the seasoning of folly. I've proof enough in Sophocles, a poet who can never be adequately praised, who pays me a really splendid tribute in the line 'For ignorance provides the happiest life.'"

Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].

Jack Pudding

A clown or buffoon, especially one who works for a mountebank.

"The Junto-men, the Hocus-Pocusses, the State-Mountebanks, with their Zanyes and Jack-puddings!"

Clement Walker, History of Independency (1648).

Flaubert on Tenors, Baritones, and Bassos

Someone who can play an instrument with no hands.

"Every morning they gulp a fresh-laid egg to polish their voices. A tenor always has a charming and tender voice, a baritone a congenial and sonorous organ, and a basso a powerful emission."

Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Platitudes (1880).

[Translation by J. I. Rodale (1954).]

Judge

A legal expert authorized to decide cases in a court of law.

"Take for example some merchant, soldier, or judge who believes he has only to give up a single tiny coin from his pile of plunder to purify once and for all the entire Lernean morass he has made of his life. All his perjury, lust, drunkenness, quarrels, killings, frauds, perfidy, and treachery he believes can be somehow paid off by agreement, and paid off in such a way that he's now free to start afresh on a new round of sin."

Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].

Middleman

A broker. A go-between. Someone through whose hands goods pass en route from the producer to the consumer.

"On the outside, life goes on in Florida courtesy of middlemen who bring in things that people are willing to pay a premium to obtain. Acapulco, Tijuana, Freeport, Miami--it doesn't matter where the pimping happens. Mr. Vee in his nostalgic moments tells me Havana used to be like that, a city of touts and pimps--the fat young men in sunglasses parked at a corner in an idling Buick, waiting for a payoff, a delivery, a contact. Havana has shifted its corporate headquarters. Beirut has come west. And now, it's Miami that gives me warm memories of always-Christmas Saigon."

Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories (1988).

Ice Cream Vendor

As skilled with a scoop as they may be, their knuckles are always in need of licking.

"All Neapolitans."

Flaubert, Dictionary of Platitudes (1880).

[Translation by J. I. Rodale (1954).]

Lawgiver

Someone with the authority to create the laws of a community.

"When they have done with masters, the state again compels them to learn the laws, and live after the pattern which they furnish, and not after their own fancies; and just as in learning to write, the writing-master first draws lines with a style for the use of the young beginner, and gives him the tablet and makes him follow the lines, so the city draws the laws, which were the invention of good lawgivers living in the olden time; these are given to the young man, in order to guide him in his conduct whether he is commanding or obeying; and he who transgresses them is to be corrected, or, in other words, called to account, which is a term used not only in your country, but also in many others, seeing that justice calls men to account. Now when there is all this care about virtue private and public, why, Socrates, do you still wonder and doubt whether virtue can be taught? Cease to wonder, for the opposite would be far more surprising. But why then do the sons of good fathers often turn out ill?"

Plato, Protagoras (5th century B.C.)

[translated by Benjamin Jowett].

Kidnapper

Someone who seizes and imprisons some unsuspecting victim, freeing her or him only in exchange for money.

"Presently the bandits returned, with very sober faces. Despite their numbers and armed strength they brought back no loot at all, not so much as a ragged cloak; and only a single prisoner, a girl. However, to judge from her clothes, she belonged to one of the first families of the district and was so beautiful that though I was an ass, I swear that I fell deeply in love with her. They brought her into the cave where, in her distress, she began to pull her hair out and tear her clothes. They did what they could to comfort her. 'You are perfectly safe, Madame,' they assured her. 'We have no intention either of hurting you or showing you any discourtesy. Be patient for a few days, if only as a kindness to us: you see, it was poverty that forced us to take up this profession and your close-fisted parents are bound to hurry up with the ransom money. After all, you are their only daughter and they are disgustingly rich.'"

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

[translated by Robert Graves]

Cowherd Girls

A young woman who tends cattle.

“Levin gazed admiringly at the cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of their condition, and gave orders for them to be driven out into the meadow, and the calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran gaily to get ready for the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up their petticoats, ran splashing through the mud with bare legs, still white, not yet brown from the sun, waving brushwood in their hands, chasing the calves that frolicked in the mirth of spring.”

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877).

An Old Retainer

A dependent or follower of a person of rank or position. Someone attached to a house or owing it service.

"Yoshikiyo had appointed himself a sort of confidential steward. He summoned the overseers of Genji's several manors in the region and assigned them to necessary tasks. Genji watched admiringly. In very quick order he had a rather charming new house. A deep brook flowed through the garden with a pleasing murmur, new plantings were set out; and when finally he was beginning to feel a little at home he could scarcely believe that it all was real. The governor of the province, an old retainer, discreetly performed numerous services. All in all it was a brighter and livelier place than he had a right to expect, although the fact that there was no one whom he could really talk to kept him from forgetting that it was a house of exile, strange and alien. How was he to get through the months and years ahead?"

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

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.

Healer

A doctor.

"That evening the Third Princess was taken with severe pains. Guessing that they were birth pangs, her women sent for Genji in great excitement. He came immediately. How vast and unconditional his joy would be, he thought, were it not for his doubts about the child. But no one must be allowed to suspect their existence. He summoned ascetics and put them to continuous spells and incantations, and he summoned all the monks who had made names for themselves as healers. The Rokujo mansion echoed with mystic rites. The princess was in great pain through the night and at sunrise was delivered of a child. It was a boy. Most unfortunate, thought Genji. It would not be easy to guard the secret if the resemblance to the father was strong."

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

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.

Drayman

A porter who uses a low cart, sometimes without wheels, to transport goods, especially wood or kegs of beer.

"Presently a film of dark smoke appears above one of those remote 'points'; instantly a negro drayman, famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, 'S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing for the first time. And the boat is rather a handsome sight, too."

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883).

High Lawyer

A robber who rides on horseback.

“Such as robbe on horse-backe were called high lawyers, and those who robbed on foote, he called Padders.”

Samuel Rowlands, Martin Mark-all, beadle of Bridewell (1610).

Buckle-Maker

The person who fashions the buckles for fastening the leather straps of shoes, belts, and other things.

"The incessant repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man, robs him of his strength, wit, and versatility, to make a pin-polisher, a buckle-maker, or any other specialty."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (1856).

Moirologist

A hired mourner.

"There may be found traces, too, of Lethe in the death ballads sung by the hired mourners. The moirologists will sing of the loneliness of the living, of the horrors of death."

Quarterly Review (1886).

Client

In ancient Rome, a plebeian under the patronage of a wealthy patrician. The patron was bound, in return for certain services, to protect his client's life and interests. Some aristocrats had scores of clients who gathered outside their domicile every morning for bread and further sustenance. This was one solution to entrenched poverty and unemployment in an era of gross disparity between the haves and the never-will-have.

"The King was miserably compelled kneeling on his knees to give over both his crown and scepter to the Pope of Rome and as his client, vassal, feodory, and tenant, to receive it of him again."

Richard Grafton, Chronicle of John II (1568).

Outputter

Someone who makes a fellow thief's job easy by putting out a neighbors' goods or cattle in a place where the thieving partner can make off with them.

"He is a more cunning thief which can steal without an outputter or receiver, than he which always is enforced to use the help of one or other."

Thomas Jackson, Commentaries upon the Apostle's Creed (1640).

Pundit

A learned Hindu. Someone versed in Sanskrit and in the philosophy, jurisprudence, and religion of India.

"The Pundits or Brahmin lawyers, still speak the original language in which these ordinances were composed."

John Justamond, tr. Raynal's Philosophical History of the settlements of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1776).

Mushroomer

Someone who knows the difference between mushrooms and toadstools.

"I'll teach those mushroomers to keep out of my meadow."

Cadman, H. Druidale (1898).

Liver Diviner

A soothsayer (or charlatan) who predicts the future based on what can be discerned from the steaming entrails and liver of a sacrificed animal.

"While Vespasian was there offering sacrifice and pondering his secret hopes, Basilides the priest, after repeated inspections of the entrails, said to him, ‘Whatever be your purpose, Vespasian, whether you think of building a house, of enlarging your estate, or augmenting the number of your slaves, there is given you a vast habitation, boundless territory, a multitude of men.’"

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD).

Carder

Someone who cards wool, removing the snarls from the fiber.

"Finally, there was the textile industry. As in the Greek world, and for similar reasons, it was at Rome sharply differentiated from purely household production. As an industry it employed a wide range of workers, from carders (carminatores) and weavers (textores) to dyers and fullers. These latter worked in relatively large establishments situated near aqueducts. Here again, apart from specialisation within the trade, there was a geographical specialisation. Thus, Tarentum, Puteoli and Ancona specialised in dyeing and in making purple dye. Syracuse, Cumae and Canusium were famous for their fine woollen cloths, while Parma and Modena produced ordinary woollen cloths in what could really be called factories. Linen was the speciality in Padua and in Etruria, and Rome was known for its embroidery. Slave labour, mostly that of women, was often used. In some branches of the industry, however, in the production of the garments themselves, for example, free workers to a large extent took the place of slaves."

Claude Mossé, The Ancient World of Work (1969)

[Translated by Janet Lloyd].

Waiter

An attendant or servant. A watchman at the gates of a city. A customs worker. A spy. Someone who attends to customers in an inn or a restaurant.

“And in all the beer gardens the waiters had opportunity to indulge that delight in each other’s society and conversation which forms so important a part in a waiter’s idea of happiness. Sometimes the people in a sparsely occupied place will fare more strange than those in a crowded one. At one time I waited twenty minutes for a bottle of the worst beer in Christendom while my waiter told a charmingly naive story to a group of his compatriots. I protested sotto voce at the time that such beer might at least have the merit of being brought quickly.”

Stephen Crane, Other Writings About New York, “Coney Island’s Failing Days” (1894-6).

Bawd

A go-between. A pander, procurer or procuress.

"If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.”

James Joyce, Ulysses (1914-1921).