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).