A charlatan's assistant, whose job was to eat (or pretend to eat) a toad, so his master can demonstrate an aptitude for saving people from poisoning.
‘So you know Khustov too?’
‘I saw him at your office yesterday, but a single glance at him is enough to see that he is a scoundrel, a gossip, a toady, and parasite.’
‘How true!’ Styopa thought, amazed at this brief, sharp, and accurate description of Khustov.”
Mikhael Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (1928-1940).
In Japan, the owner of an inn or restaurant specializing in serving teas.
"Here was the highway to the capital, and a road running along the mountainside wide enough for two horses to pass each other. Here too was a teahouse thatched with straw and built up of cryptomeria branches woven together. A sign said 'Finest Home-brew Here,' but the rice paste was many days old and dust had deprived it of its whiteness. On a side counter were tea brushes, clay dollas, and dancing-drummer dolls—and reminiscent of Kyoto and therefore a tonic to the weary travelers, who rested there awhile. Moemon and Osan enjoyed it so that, upon leaving they offered the old innkeeper one piece of gold. But he scowled unappreciatively, like a cat that is shown an umbrella. 'Please pay me for the tea,' he demanded, and they were amused to think that less than fifteen miles from the capital there should be a village which had not yet heard of gold pieces."
Ihara Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love (1686).
A wood cutter. Someone who cuts down trees.
"The rooted oaks would fly, Before th' approaching fellers."
Robert Burns, Epistle to R. Graham (1790).
A photographer whose pictures are printed on a thin piece of tin rather than paper.
“I watched a talented and persuasive individual who was operating in front of a tintype gallery, and he had only the most marvelously infrequent opportunities to display his oratory and finesse. The occasional stragglers always managed to free themselves before he could drag them into the gallery and take their pictures. In the long intervals he gazed about him with a bewildered air, as if he felt his world dropping from under his feet. Once I saw him spy a promising youth afar off. He lurked with muscles at a tension, and then at the proper moment he swooped. ‘Look-a-here,’ he said, with tears of enthusiasm in his eyes, ‘the best picture in the world! An’ on’y four fer a quarter. O’ny jest try it, an’ you’ll go away perfectly satisfied!’ ‘I’lll go away perfectly satisfied without trying it,’ replied the promising youth, and he did. The tintype man wanted to dash his samples to the ground and whip the promising youth. He controlled himself, however, and went to watch the approach of two women and a little boy who were nothing more than three dots, away down the board walk.”
Stephen Crane, Other Writings About New York, “Coney Island’s Failing Days” (1894-6).
An expert player of the piano or pianoforte.
“I wish some pianiste of the thundering school would attack the piano now."
Mabel Collins, Prettiest Woman (1885).
A magician, juggler, or conjurer. One skilled in sleight-of-hand.
“The more sombre Tregetour promised to cut off and refix the head of a sad-faced little boy.”
Edward Lytton, The Last of the Barons (1843).
Someone who pilfers. A petty thief.
“The poore and petty pilferers you see on wheeles, on gibbets and the gallow tree.”
George Wither, A collection of emblemes, ancient and modern (1634).
Someone who makes nautical charts.
“When the Board of Longitude disbanded in 1828, at the repeal of the prevailing Longitude Act, its chief duty, ironically enough, had become the supervision of testing and assigning chronometers to ships of the Royal Navy. In 1829, the navy’s own hydrographer (chief chartmaker) took over the responsibility. This was a big job, as it included seeing to the rate setting of new machines and the repair of old ones, as well as the delicate transportation of the chronometers over land, from factory to seaport and back again.”
Dava Sobel, Longitude (1995).
A crabber is someone who hunts, traps, gathers, and sells crabs.
“What Jane’s car filled with as we drove over the creek bridge was not the black wind of Chaos, but the stench of the crabhouses, steaming up from small mountains of red carapaces and other nonedible parts of the crab thrown out in the sun by the pickers. It is a smell that grabs you by the nose—I’ve seen many a visitor retch while crossing the creek in summer—but like many another thing, it can be lived with: most of the natives aren’t even aware of it, and I for one, have learned to relish it, to inhale it deeply and savor its every rank ingredient in my nostrils."
John Barth, The Floating Opera (1956).
Someone who practices a trade on the premises of the customer.
School Master: someone who is the principal or head of a school.
Someone who makes or constructs something. A maker, framer, fabricator. A workman.
"So many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-chat have ever since been working upon my uncle Toby's pattern."
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1761).
A kitchen maid. A scullion.
"I wish that you could find me at Brussels an humble marmiton, tournebroche, or other animal, who could roast and boil decently."
P. D. Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Letter to Dayrolles (1754).
Someone who tames wild horses.
"Whan the horsse breaker geveth unto a lusty freshe young horsse, too much of the bridle, he is wilde and wanton."
Miles Coverdale, A Spyrtuall and Moost Precious Pearle (1550).
A schemer. One who promotes bubble companies. A speculator. A cheat.
"Let not the Projector pretend the publike good, when he intends but to robbe the riche and to cheat the poore."
Daniel Featly, Clavis Mystica; a key opening divers texts of scripture (1636).
A weaver.
"The mystical weavers of the Middle Ages were celebrated under the name of lollards because in effect, while working, they prayed, chanting in a low voice, or at least in their minds, some song from the nursery. The rhythm of the shuttle, passed hither and drawn back in a steady beat, took on the rhythm of the heart; in the evening, it was often found that, with the fabric was stitched, in the same words, a hymn, a complaint."
("Les tisserands mystiques du moyen âge furent célèbres sous le nom de lollards parce qu'en effet, tout en travaillant, ils lollaient, chantaient à voix basse, ou du moins en esprit, quelque chant de nourrice. Le rythme de la navette, lancée et ramenée a temps égaux, s'associait au rythme du coeur; le soir, il se trouvait souvent qu'avec la toile, s'était tissée, aux mêmes nombres, un hymne, une complainte."
Jules Michelet, Le Peuple ("The People") (1846).
"These impostors, rather than pastors,
minishers more truly than Ministers,
gelders rather than elders."
Sir Francis Bacon, Works (1564).
“Just because she had a cute dimple in her elbow, and because her lips were for the fellow who dared, here he was now with three deep wrinkles between his fine straight eyebrows and hot flushes of stage fright surging over his body. He even started talking to himself, a lapse he had always said was the earmark of a sheepherder going batty.”
B. M. Bower, On with the Dance (1934).
"A mountain of grated cheese
Is seen standing alone in the middle of the plain,
A kettle has been brought to its summit...
A river of milk gushes forth from a cave
And goes flowing through the town
Its embankments are made of ricotta...
The king of the place is called Bugalosso,
They have made him king because he is the laziest,
Like a haystack he is big and fat...
And from his arse manna comes forth
And when he spits, out come marzipans,
Instead of lice, he has fish in his head."
Bergola contra la Bizaria, (16th Century).
[cited in Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, (1976).]
The modern fiduciary pledges to look after other people’s money, as in the case of employee retirement plans. In ancient Rome, however, a “fiduciary” had an even more delicate assignment. A fiduciary was the person entrusted to bring home safely a daughter or sister, after buying her out of a bad marriage. Her family would send their fiduciary to pay the price of the unhappy woman’s freedom, take possession of her, and bring her unharmed to the person of her choosing. Having the same root as the word “fidelity,” the word has always meant someone who can be trusted to act faithfully or unselfishly.
A writer for a daily newspaper (from the French word for day--"le jour").
"A journalist is stimulated by a deadline: he writes worse when he has time."
--Karl Kraus.
“But in exchange for the horse and wagon the peddler would get a fairly good cow. He could take over his daughter’s little dairy business. It could hardly pay less than peddling. He was the only person Yakov knew who peddled nothing and sold it, in bits and slices, for real kopeks. Sometimes he traded nothing for pig bristles, wool, grain, sugar beets, and then sold the peasants dried fish, soap, kerchiefs, candy, in minute quantities. That was his talent and on it he miraculously lived. ‘He who gave us teeth will give us bread.’ Yet his breath smelled of nothing—not bread, not anything.”
Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (1966).
Someone who carves horn to fashion spoons, combs, and other implements. A musician who plays the horn or trumpet.
In Ancient Greece, before elections were decided by tiny bits of paper called “chads” (hanging, dangling, pregnant, or otherwise), public office was decided by the random pulling of a dark or light bean. The people who loaded the bean machines were “bean counters” and they were known less for their creativity than for their diligence and honesty. The term “bean counter” is now used for accountants, who in recent times have earned a reputation less for diligence and honesty than for creativity.
