Minter

Someone who coins or stamps money.

"Since priests have been minters, money hath been wourse then it was before."

Latimer, Sermon on the Ploughers (1548).

Teamster

The driver of a team of plough animals. An owner of a team of such animals.

“While the wise team walked slowly in an acre-wide circle, the lines winding around the front standard of the rack, he scattered the hay neatly in little piles. The bawling herd of weaned calves and poor cows trailed after in a long queue, thinking each forkful as it fell into the cold wind must be better than the last but at last settling down to their breakfast when Lynn drove the empty wagon back to the corral. Once the team was unharnessed and left comfortably in their stalls, he was a free man until four o’clock, when he would have to haul another ton or two out and scatter it as before. A simple life—a contented life, even though it was lonesome at times. If it wasn’t for that darned dance Saturday night.”

B. M. Bower, On with the Dance (1934).

Cowboy

A man with a steed.

“It was a sorry stop he made, because Hattie had a wonderful idea of lights all along the porch, and on the gateposts, and wherever a light would hang. She was sorry she hadn’t thought of it before, but still, it wouldn’t be so very much trouble, would it Lynn, to ride around and tell everybody to bring their lanterns—all the lanterns they could rustle? Lynn said sure, it wouldn’t be any trouble at all. Which Hattie apparently believed, because she added archly that all a cowboy ever did was ride around anyway.”

B. M. Bower, On with the Dance (1934).

Catchpoll

An officer or constable.

"There, again, laboured the ditchers with their shovels, the hoe-men with their hoes, the pickers with their pick-axes, the beaters with their wooden mallets, the shavers with their shaving-irons, and the stone-layers and wallers and rammers and paviours with their proper and necessary gear and tools, the load-men and hod-men with their hods, and the turfers with their oblong sheets of turf, cut and torn at the master's bidding from all the meadows around; the catchpolls too, with their rods and knotted clubs, rousing the labourers and busily urging them to their work; and ever in the forefront the masters of the work, weighing all that was done in the scales of their geometrical plan; moreover, all these labourers were driven and constrained to this work through a continual time of travail and grief, of fear and pain."

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

Factotum

One literally who "does everything." A jack-of-all-trades. A servant who has the entire management of his master's affairs.

"Being an absolute Johannes fac totum, he is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrey."

Greene, Greene's Groatsworth of Witte (1592).

Confidence Man

Someone who tricks people out of their money. "A professional swindler of respectable appearance and address, who uses the trick of having the victim hand over money or other valuables as a token of ‘confidence’ in the sharper." (OED)

“But Mr. Carlisle was made of sterner stuff. If there is much to be said for a moral standpoint against Confidence Trickery as a profession, there is this to be urged in its favour, looking at it from a purely utilitarian point of view—that it undoubtedly breeds in its initiates a certain enviable coolheadedness and enables them to behave with an easy grace in circumstances where the layman would be nonplussed. Mr. Carlisle, after what he would have been the first to confess a bad two minutes, was his resourceful self once more.”

P. G. Wodehouse, Hot Water (1932).

Carver

A sculptor. The servant who carves the meat at his or her employer's table.

"There was only one penalty for such an emissary--the block, and Payn was brought to Cade's tent, where axe and block were brought forth, but fortunately his life was saved by Cade's sword-bearer and carver, who said that a hundred or more would die if Payn were executed."

Six Medieval Men & Women, "Sir John Fastolf," H. S. Bennett (1955).

Reaper

Someone who harvests, grimly or happily.

“‘And who are those people in back of him? Good grief, there’s a whole army running behind him.’

‘They’re the poor who glean the leavings of the vintage, Mother. They’re not an army; don’t be afraid.’

“And truly, the swarm of ragamuffins which began to appear in his train was like an army. They immediately scattered all through the harvested vineyards—men, women and children, with sacks and baskets—and began to search. Each year at the reaping, the vintage and the olive harvest these flocks of hunger poured out of the whole of Galilee and collected the wheat, grapes and olives which the landowners left for the poor, as ordered by the Law of Israel.”

Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1960).

[Translated by Peter Bien.]

Guest Master

A hosteler. In a monastery, the monk obliged to look after guests' upkeep and entertainment.

"One of their abbots, being most hard-hearted and inhuman himself, put men like unto himself into the monastic offices, the most evil whom he could find. It befel then that a jongleur was benighted on his journey and came to this monastery for entertainment; where he found neither cheerful welcome nor any pity, but got with difficulty the blackest of bread, and herbs with salt and water, and a hard pallet. Whereat he was so grieved that he began to think within himself how he might take vengeance on the heartless guestmaster. So when the day had dawned, he turned aside by the way whereby he hoped that the abbot would come back to his monastery; and, meeting him, he cried, 'Welcome, my lord, my good and liberal abbot! I thank you and your whole commmunity, for that the brother guestmaster entertained me royally last night; he set before me most excellent fish and wine of price, and so many dishes that we know not their number; and even now as I departed he gave me a pair of shoes, a belt, and a knife.' The abbot, hearing this, was moved to indignation and hastened back to his abbey, where he accused the aforesaid monk in Chapter as for a grievous crime. The guestmaster denied in vain; for he was sore scourged and driven forth from his office; and the abbot set in his place another whom he believed to be still worse."

Latin Stories (1842).

Woodcutter

An axe wielder. A hatchet man.

"The boats pulled up below a cliff at an island cove, where the smallest of the hanging rocks was like a detail of a painting. The branches caught in mists from either side were like a tapestry, and far away in Murasaki's private gardens a willow trailed its branches in a deepening green and the cherry blossoms were rich and sensuous. In other places they had fallen, but here they were still at their smiling best, and along the galleries wisteria was beginning to send forth its lavender. Yellow yamabuki reflected on the lake as if about to join its own image. Waterfowl swam past in amiable pairs, and flew in and out with twigs in their bills, and one longed to paint the mandarin ducks as they coursed about on the water. Had that Chinese woodcutter been present, he might well have gazed on until his ax handle rotted away."

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

[Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.]

Subashi

A local policeman or sergeant in Turkey.

"The Cadi and Subassi, if they finde any shops open, or any body eating in the day, set him on an Asse backwards."

Samuel Purchas, Pilgrimage (1613).

Stroller

An actor who travels from town to town.

"When they travell thus on foote, they are no more call'd Rancke-riders, but Strowlers, a proper name given to Country players, that trotte from towne to towne upon the hard hoofe."

Thomas Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-light, or the bell-mans second nights-walke (1608).

Gonfalonier

The bearer of a banner or ensign, frequently composed of or ending in several tails or streamers, suspended from a cross-bar instead of being directly fastened to the pole, especially as used by various Italian republics or in ecclesiastical processions. A standard bearer.

"The kynge Boors so smote Sarmedon, the ganfononer, that he kutte off the arme with all the sheilde, and the banner fell to the erthe."

Merlin, or the early history of king Arthur, a prose romance (c. 1450).

Squiller

A servant in charge of a scullery.

"To send thither a purveyor of coal, and all such other as shall go unto the squiller."

Rutland Papers (1522).

Damosel

A lady in waiting. A wet-nurse.

"Never did Countess Yde, who was so good and fair, suffer that one of her three sons, for any cause whatsoever, should be suckled by waiting-woman or damosel; all three were suckled at her own breast. One day the lady went to hear mass at her chapel, and commended her three sons to one of her maidens. One of the three, awakening, wailed sore and howled; wherefore the maiden called a damosel and bade her suckle the child. Better had it been for her that she had been at Nivelles that day! The Countess came back and called the maiden: 'Tell me now wherefore this child hath wetted his chin?' 'My lady, he awoke but now; sore and loud were his cries, and I bade a damosel give him of her milk.' When the Countess heard this, all her heart shook; for the pain that she had, she fell upon a seat; sore gasped her heart under her breast, and when she would have spoken, she called herself a poor leper!"

“A Sucking-Prince,” La Chanson du Chevalier du Cygne et de Godeforoid de Bouillon (14^th century).

Investment Banker

A deal monger.

“In 1934 Wall Street was almost a ghost town; customers’ men drowsed in the empty board rooms, and brokers idled and joked the days away on the floor of the Stock Exchange, where trading volume was running at less than half the pace of 1933. The first fine rapture of the ‘Roosevelt market’ had vanished with the failure of the early New Deal measures to bring about significant recovery, and apathy had settled over the market. When stocks were traded at all, they were traded listlessly, desultorily, with little price movement. The professional speculators were on the sidelines waiting to see what would happen next, and the public had little money to invest and less interest in investing. Brokerage firms were laying people off again, and giving them ‘apple weeks’—one week off without pay out of every four weeks, during which they could, and some did, sell apples. Investment bankers were no better off, since with scarcely any new money available the capital market was all but dead.”

John Brooks, Once in Golconda (1970).

Metropolitan

A bishop who oversees the bishops of a province.

"The Catholic Bishop of Barbers, the very Metropolitan of Surgeons."

Thomas Randolph, Aristippus, or the jovial philosopher (1630).

Pimp

A pander. A procurer.

“[Montaigne] became such a connoisseur of side-stepping techniques that he even found political sleight-of-hand admirable, so long as it was not used to support tyranny. One story he relished was that of how Zaleucus, prince of the Locrians of ancient Greece, reduced excessive spending in his realm. He ordered that any woman could be attended by several maids, but only when she was drunk, and that she could wear as many gold jewels and embroidered dresses as she liked, if she was working as a prostitute. A man could sport gold rings if he was a pimp. It worked: gold jewelry and large entourages disappeared overnight, yet no one rebelled, for no one felt they had been forced into anything.”

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live or A Life of Montaigne (2010).

Bey

The Turkish governor of a district or province.

"In Tunis, direct Ottoman rule lasted for an even shorter time. Before the end of the sixteenth century the lower officers of the janissaries revolted, formed a council, and elected a leader (dey) who shared power with the governor. In the middle of the seventeenth century a third person, the bey who commanded the janissary corps which collected rural taxes, seized a share of the power; at the beginning of the eighteenth century, one of them was able to found a dynasty of beys, the Husaynids."

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

Coppersmith

Someone who works in copper or more specifically someone who makes copper utensils.

"Beware of being golden apprentices, silver journeymen, and copper masters."

William Jay, Autobiography (1799).