Someone who helps a speaker or performer by supplying him or her, when at a loss, with a word, phrase, name, or something to say. In the theater, someone hidden out of sight to help actors who have forgotten their lines.
"Everybody being more or less inaudible, with the solitary exception of the Prompter."
Francis Burnand, My Time and what I've done with it (1874).
A royal officer attending at fairs and markets, to keep the standards of weights and measures, and punish misdemeanors therein.
"God is the principal clerk of the market, all the weights of the bag are his work."
Fuller, The holy and profane state (1642).
A native deputy or viceroy in India. A governor of a province of the Mogul empire. Someone who returns to Europe from the East with great riches, hence, any man of great wealth (Webster's).
"The glorified spirit of a great statesman and philosopher dawdling, like a bilious old nabob at a watering place."
Thomas Macaulay, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Southey's Colloquium (1830).
Someone who makes copies of manuscripts by hand. A scribe.
"No one is claiming that anything in the holy scriptures is a lie, if that is the inference you draw, and none of this has anything to do with the personal conflict between Augustine and Jerome. But the truth demands, what is plain even for the blind to see, that there are often passages where the Greek has been badly translated because of the inexperience or carelessness of the translator, and often a true and faithful reading has been corrupted by uneducated copyists, something we see happening every day, or sometimes even altered by half-educated scribes not thinking what they do. Then who is giving his support to a lie--the man who corrects and restores these texts or the man who would rather accept an error than remove it?"
Erasmus, Letter to Maarten Van Dorp, (1515)
[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].
Someone who sets traps to catch animals or human prey.
"He has broke through the net and left the snarer here herself entangled."
Thomas Middleton, More Dissemblers Besides Women (1622).
