Shyster

An unscrupulous lawyer.

“Rush Madder was a shyster in the Quorn Building. An ambulance chaser, a small-time fixer, an alibi builder-upper, anything that smelled a little and paid a little more. I hadn’t heard of him in conection with any big operations like burning people’s feet.”

Raymond Chandler, Goldfish (1939).

Erasmus on Monks

(from the Greek word for "solitary"). A member of a religious brotherhood who lives in a monastery and follows the particular discipline of his order.

"I don't believe any life would be more wretched than theirs if I [folly] didn't come to their aid in many ways. The whole tribe is so universally loathed that even a chance meeting is thought to be ill-omened--and yet they are gloriously self-satisfied. In the first place, they believe it's the highest form of piety to be so uneducated that they can't even read. Then when they bray like donkeys in church, repeating by rote the psalms they haven't understood, they imagine they are charming the ears of their heavenly audience with infinite delight. Many of them too make a good living out of their squalor and beggary, bellowing for bread from door to door, and indeed making a nuisance of themselves in every inn, carriage, or boat, to the great loss of all the other beggars. This is the way in which these smooth individuals, in all their filth and ignorance, their boorish and shameless behaviour, claim to bring back the apostles into our midst!"

Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].

Collier

Someone who works in the coal trade. A coal miner.

"Like a collier's sack, bad without, but worse within."

Fuller, Gnomol. Engl. Prov. (1732).

The Chestnut Seller and the Almanac Maker

One who sells fresh or roasted chestnuts.

"At that time, when the Chrysanthemum Festival was almost at hand, a chestnut peddler made his annual trip to the capital. While speaking of one thing and another at the house of the almanac maker, he asked where the mistress was, but as this was an awkward subject in the household none of the servants ventured to answer.

Frowning, Osan's husband told him: 'She's dead.'

'That's strange,' the peddler went on. 'I've seen someone who looks very much like her, in fact, someone who doesn't differ from her one particle. And with her is the living image of your young man.'"

Ihara Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love (1686).

Turd Monger

A manure seller.

"That torde monger, whych dysdaynynge my preciouse preceptes, presenteth me with his vile dirty donge."

John Bale, The Apology of J. B. agaynste a ranke papyst (1550).

Lifter

A thief.

"Pads, Biters, Divers, Lifters... these may all pass under the general appellation of Rooks."

Charles Cotton, The Complete Gamester (1674-80).

Buttery-boy

Another kitchen menial, a dairy specialist.

"He drove the English into a sheep-pen; there was he shut in on every side with cooks and buttery-boys, pantlers and grooms and suchlike rabble; one wielded a pitchfork, another a pointed pole; many a shrewd stroke he had from spit and pestle, but all his fellows gave him good help. Then it might have sped ill with their bodies and lives, but up there rode a troop of horse, drawn to the castle by the shouting of the fray."

Picard Trouvere Cuvelier (1350).