Jade

A strumpet. A prostitute.

"Neither your noble blood and rank nor your education sufficed to keep you from falling a slave to pleasure; youthful follies ran away with you. Your luckless curiosity earned you a sinister punishment. But blind Fortune, after tossing you maliciously about from peril to peril has somehow, without thinking what she was doing, landed you here in religious felicity. Let her begone now and fume furiously where she pleases, let her find some other plaything for her cruel hands. She has no power to hurt those who devote their lives to the honour and service of our Goddess's majesty. The jade!"

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

[translated by Robert Graves].

Ritualist

One versed in rituals. One practiced in symbolic religious rites. A priest in Heian Japan.

"One has visited a shrine or a temple with the request that certain prayers be said on one's behalf. What a pleasure to hear the ritualist or priest intone them in a better voice, and more fluently, than one had expected!"

Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book (11th Century).

[Translated by Ivan Morris.]

Bulldog

A proctor's constable (at Cambridge University).

"The records of the nineteenth century shed light on the trades which surrounded undergraduates and academics alike: ink-sellers, japanners, auctioneers, breech-cleaners, and bacon-sellers, with a victualler who was also a stay-maker, but the Proctors' trade of 1852 seemed reassuringly familiar in its triviality... I shan't forget the image of Bulldog Harvey, megaphone to his lips outside Schools, shouting 'Don't spray it, drink it.'"

Frank Stubbings, Bedders, Bulldogs and Bedells: A Cambridge ABC (1991)

Quack

Someone who pretends to be a doctor or to have knowledge of medicine.

"A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills."

George Crabbe, The Village (1783)

Navigator

A sailor or seaman skilled and experienced in the art of navigation.

"Muhammad ibn-Babishad added, 'If you are on the sea and you want to know whether you are near the land or a mountain, look out in the afternoon when the sun is going down; if when it goes down there is actually a mountain or island on the opposite horizon, it will be visible then.'"

Buzurg ibn Shahriyar of Ramhurmuz, Kitab 'aja'ib al-Hind (mid-10th century A.D.)

translated in Le livre des merveilles de l'Inde (1883-86).

Quoted in George F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring (1951)

The Naked Porter and Ten Professional Wrestlers

Someone who has charge of a gate, letting people in or keeping people out.

"Once outside in the courtyard I called out: 'Hey, porter, where are you? Open the gate, I want to be off before daybreak.' He was lying naked on the bare ground beside the gate and answered, still half-asleep: 'Who's that? Who's asking to get off at this time of night? Don't you know, whoever you are, that the roads are swarming with bandits? You may be tired of life, or you may have some crime on your conscience, but don't think that I'm such a pumpkin-headed idiot as to risk my life for yours by opening the gate and letting them in.' I protested: 'But it's almost morning. And anyhow, what harm could bandits do you? Certainly I think you are an idiot to be afraid of them. A team of ten professional wrestlers couldn't take anything worth having from a man as naked as you are.'"

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

[translated by Robert Graves].

Fraud

One who defrauds others of their money. A confidence man. A scam artist.

"Hearken also to Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering of riches: He who maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent. The poets feign, that when Plutus (which is riches) is sent from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly; but when he is sent from Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot; meaning, that riches gotten by good means and just labor pace slowly; but when they come by the death of others (as by the course of inheritance, testaments, and the like), they come tumbling upon a man. But it might be applied likewise to Pluto, taking him for the devil (as by fraud and oppression, and unjust means), they come upon speed. The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul: parsimony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent; for it withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity."

Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Riches (1625)

Wrecker

Someone who causes ships to wreck, by showing false signals or lights to lure them aground, after which the plundering begins. Someone who salvages ships that have wrecked.

"Cornish wreckers went straight from church to light their beacon-fires."

Frederick W. Farrar, The early days of Christianity (1882)

Stapler

A merchant of the Staple, with the right to export specific goods from a town or place appointed by royal authority. A wool trader or middleman. A wholesaler who dealt in staple goods.

"The staplers were merchants who had the monopoly of exporting the principal raw commodities of the realm."

Charles Gross, The Gild Merchant (1890)

Oarsman

A rower of boats.

"Like unto our Ower-men, look one way, and row another."

Daniel Tuvil, Essaies politicke and morall (1608)

A Currier of Disfavor

A person who dresses and colors leather after it is tanned.

"The first are ye that work in clothing, silks, or wool or fur, shoes or gloves or girdles. Men can in no wise dispense with you; men must needs have clothing, therefore should ye so serve them as to do your work truly; not to steal half the cloth, or to use other guile, mixing hair with your wool or stretching it out longer, whereby a man thinketh to have gotten good cloth, yet thou hast stretched it to be longer than it should be, and makest a good cloth into useless stuff. Nowadays no man can find a good hat for thy falsehood; the rain will pour down through the brim into his bosom. Even such deceit is there in shoes, in furs, in curriers' work; one man sells an old skin for a new, and how manifold are your deceits no man knoweth so well as thou and thy master the devil."

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

The Barber and the Curling Iron

Morose: “That cursed barber!”

Truewit: Yes faith, a cursed wretch indeed sir.”

Morose: “I have married his cittern that’s common to all men. Some plague, above the plague—“

Truewit: “All Egypt’s ten plagues.”

Morose: Revenge me on him.

Truewit: ‘Tis very well, sir. If you laid on a curse or two more, I’ll assure you he’ll bear ‘em. As, that he may get the pox with seeking to cure it, sir? Or that while he is curling another man’s hair, his own may drop off? Or for burning some male bawd’s lock, he may have his brain beat out with the curling iron?

Morose: No, let the wretch live wretched. May he get the itch, and his shop so lousy as no man dare come at him, nor he come at no man.

Truewit: Aye, and if he would swallow all his balls for pills, let not them purge him.

Morose: Let his warming pan be ever cold.

Truewit: A perpetual frost underneath it, sir.

Moreose: Let him never hope to see fire again.

Truewit: But in hell, sir.

Morose: His chairs be always empty, his scissors rust, and his combs mould in their cases.

Truewit: Very dreadful that! And may he lose the invention, sir, of carving lanterns in paper.

Morose: Let there be no bawd carted that year to employ a basin of his but let him be glad to eat his sponge for bread.

Truewit: And drink lotium [stale urine used by barbers] to it, and much good do him.

Morose: Or for want of bread—

Truewit: Eat ear-wax, sir. I’ll help you. Or draw his own teeth and add them to the lute string.

Morose: No, beat the old ones to powder, and make bread of them.

Truewit.: Yes, make meal o’ the millstones.

Morose: May all the botches and burns that he has cured on others break out upon him.

Truewit: And he now forget the cure of ‘em in himself, sir; or if he do remember it, let him ha’ scraped all his linen into lint fo ‘it, and have not a rag left him to set up with.

Morose: Let him never set up again, but have the gout in his hands forever. Now, no more, sir.

Truewit: O that last was too high set! You might go less with him i’ faith, and be revenged enough; as, that he be never able to new-paint his pole—

Morose: Good sir, no more. I forgot myself.

Truewit: Or want credit to take up with a comb-maker—

Morose: No more, sir.

Truewit: Or having broken his glass in a former despair, fall now into a much greater, of ever getting another—

Morose: I beseech you, no more.

Turewit: Or that he never be trusted with trimming any but chimney-sweepers—

Morose: Sir—

Truewit: Or may he cut a collier’s throat with his razor, by chance-medley, and yet hang for’t.

Morose: I will forgive him, rather than hear any more. I beseech you, sir.

Ben Jonson, The Silent Woman (1609)

Swift on Tradesmen

Someone engaged in the industrial arts. An artisan. A craftsman. A shopkeeper.

“If Things did not break or wear out, how would Tradesmen live?”

Jonathan Swift, A complete collection of genteel and ingenious conversation (1738)

Wetter

The person who wets down paper before it is printed on. In glass making, the worker who detaches glass by wetting it.

"If the bottle be large it is handed, whilst still attached to the blowing-iron, to the 'wetter off', who detaches it by applying a moistened tool to the neck."

H. J. Powell, Glass-making (1883)

Clicker

A tout for a shoemaker. A worker who distributes the cut out leather to the other workers in a cobbler's shop.

"Clicker, the Shoe-maker's Journeyman or Servant, that cuts out all the work, and stands at or walks before the door, and says 'What d' ye lack, sir? What d' ye buy, madam'?"

B. E., A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew (1700)

Sky-farmer

Swindlers who impose on people, pretending their farms burned or their animals died of disease.

"Sky farmers, cheats who pretend they were farmers in the isle of Sky, or some other remote place, or else called sky farmers, from their farms being in the clouds."

Francis Grose, A classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue (1785)

Voider

A servant who cleans up after a meal, taking away what's left of the repast and the plates, serving dishes, nappery, and cutlery.

"The voider having cleared the table, Cardes and Dice are served up."

Thomas Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-Light Works (1608)

Rower

An oarsman.

"In the fleet there was the same treachery. Some of the rowers were Batavians, and they hindered the operations of the sailors and combatants by an apparent want of skill; then they began to back water, and to run the sterns on to the hostile shore. At last they killed the pilots and centurions, unless these were willing to join them. The end was that the whole fleet of four and twenty vessels either deserted or was taken."

Tacitus, Histories (100 AD)

The Second Oldest Profession

“What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London, balancing the rights and wrongs?”

John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)

Champions

In a legal or ecclesiastical dispute, combatants picked to fight in place of the plaintiff and defendant to decide the matter. Probably derived from the French word for fields, "les champs," thus someone who fights in the open air or in a field.

"A brief of Right was brought by the Bishop of Salisbury against the Earl of Salisbury, whereby the bishop claimeth the castle of Salisbury with its appurtenances. And last term they joined issue between the champions, Robert S. being the bishop's champion and Nicholas D. the earl's; and the fight was fixed for the morrow of the Purification. And the Court bade them have their champions harnessed in leather and ready to do battle that same day. And early on the morrow the bishop came first, and his champion followed him to the bar clad in white leather next his skin, and over it a coat of red sendal painted with the bishop's arms, and a knight to bear his staff and a serving-man to bear his target, which was of like colour with his coat, painted with images both without and within; and the bishop stood at the bar with his champion by his side, the knight bearing his staff."

Year Books of Edward III (14th Century).

Diker

Someone who constructs or works on dikes. A worker who digs ditches or trenches.

"For who but a man stupefied and deadened by age or cares, could have failed to rejoice in the sight of that Master Simon the Dyker, so learned in geometrical work, pacing with rod in hand, and with all a master's dignity, and setting out hither and thither, not so much with that actual rod as with the spiritual rod of his mind, the work which in imagination he had already conceived--tearing down houses and granges, hewing to the ground orchards and trees covered with flowers or fruit, seeing to it with the utmost zeal and care that the streets should be cleared, on workdays even more than on holidays, for all convenience of traffic, digging up kitchen-gardens with their crops of potherbs or of flax, treading down and destroying the crops to make straight the ways, even though some groaned in the indignation of their heart, and cursed him under their breath? Here the peasant folk with their marl-wagons and dung-carts, dragging loads of pebbles to be laid upon the road, cheered each other to the work with strokes and hearty blows on the shoulders."

Lambert, parish priest of Ardres (13th century).

[from G. G. Couton, Life in the Middle Ages (1910).]

Wagoner

A wagon driver. A farm servant, who in addition to ploughing the fields, takes produce to market in a wagon.

"Look how yon one-eyed waggoner of heaven Hath by his horses' fiery-winged hoofs, Burst ope the melancholy jail of night."

Thomas Dekker and H. Chettle, Patient Grissil (Shaks. Soc.) (1603)

Brazier

Someone who makes things or repairs items of brass.

"Mr. Wood made his half-pence of such base metal that the brazier would hardly give you above a penny of good money for a shilling of his."

Jonathan Swift, The Drapier letters (1724)

Rubricator

The person who executed or inserted rubrics--red lettering--in early printed books and manuscripts.

"The rubricator and the scribe were usually different people, and we constantly find that the rubricator inserts a wrong capital letter."

Walter Skeat, An etymological dictionary of the English language (1882)

Slave Merchant

Someone who literally buys and sells other people.

“I do not have to tell you there has been a disappointing retreat of progress in recent times, whatever it is we call progress, especially disappointing because of the little we have had since the Emancipation. There’s something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil.”

Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (1966)

Lookout

A watchman on land or sea.

"Al-Ubullah was at the mouth of the canal on the Tigris; but entrance into the canal was dangerous because of a large whirlpool. Al-Ubullah also had shipyards. At the mouth of the river which then entered the sea near 'Abbadan, there were treacherous shallows on which ships were often wrecked. To keep ships off these shallows, three wooden scaffolds (khashabat) were erected in the sea, supporting watch towers; beacons were lit on them at night, to serve the purpose of a lighthouse. The towers also served as signal-stations, on which a lookout was kept for pirates from the Persian Gulf and even India."

George F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring (1951)

Dyer

Someone who dyes cloth or other materials.

"The man who cannot distinguish the false from the true/

Sustains as heavy a loss and blow to his heart/

As the 'expert' who thinks he can tell the two dyes apart/

When he can't tell Sidonian blue from the similar hue/

We get from the moss of Aquinum and use for our cloth."

Horace, Epistle to Aristius Fuscus (21 B.C.)

Horner

Someone who plays a horn or wind instrument.

"Standing there the kid is (with a new gray fedora) on a Sunday afternoon and watching the cars go by, go by, go by, to cities and news of wild things, Old Kaycee the alto town, old Frisco the tenor town, old Detroit the baritone town, old New York the jumpingnest town, the Dizzybird Town, old Chicago the open town, old San Pedro the seaman's town, the pierhead jumpin town, the bottom of the land town, the jumpin off town; he looked just like that, and more innocent, and blew his head off that night; a fellow coming in from work came running into the room where the jazz was, yelling "'Blowblowblow!' and we'd heard him yelling that all the way up the stairs...."

Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody (1951)

Kaiser

Derived from the word Caesar. An emperor.

"This Life indeed is but a Comedy, Where this, the Kaisar playes; and that, the Clown."

Josuah Sylvester, Works (1618)

Caroler

A professional singer.

"The New Year came, and there was caroling. Numbers of young courtiers had fine voices, and from this select group only the best received the royal appointment as carolers. Kaoru was named master of one of the two choruses and Yugiri's son the lieutenant was among the musicians. There was a bright, cloudless moon, almost at full, as they left the main palace for the Reizei Palace."

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

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.