Courtier

Someone who is part of a king or queen's entourage. One with an aptitude for flattering, stroking, and amusing those in power. A hanger-on.

"This again addeth to the courtiers' misery, that if the king have promised to stay anywhere, and especially if the herald have publicly proclaimed this as the royal will, then be sure that he will set out at daybreak, mocking all men's expectation by his sudden change of purpose.

Whereby it cometh frequently to pass that such courtiers as have let themselves be bled, or have taken some purgative, must yet follow their prince forthwith without regard to their own bodies, and, setting their life on the hazard of a die, hasten blindfold to ruin for dread of losing that which they have not, nor never shall have."

Peter of Blois, 14th Letter (12th century).

Pannier-man

A fish seller who brings his goods to market in a large basket known as a pannier. The officer in the Inns of Court, who brought provisions back from the market using a horse and panniers.

"If the pannier-man's jack was ever better known by his loins of mutton, I'll be flayed."

Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair (1614).

Rifler

A robber, plunderer, or spoiler.

"The riflers committed depredations on the most irreproachable persons, when any booty was to be got."

Thomas Carte, A general history of England (1750).

Knouter

A flogger who used a knotted whip, called a knout, to whip condemned criminals (especially in Russia).

“A gigantic creature, solidly made and black bearded to the waist, Ivan once had the honor of serving as official knouter to the Great White Tsar.”

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010).

Jester

A comic.

"Now whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly. In fact, if there's no one there to raise a laugh with his folly, genuine or assumed, they have to bring on a 'jester', one who's paid for the job, or invite some absurd hanger-on whose laughable, that is, foolish, remarks will banish silence and gloom from the company. What was the point of loading the stomach with all those delicacies, fancy dishes, and titbits if the eyes and ears and the whole mind can't be fed as well on laughter, jokes, and wit?"

Erasmus, Praise of Folly, (1509)

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

Economist

A practitioner of a form of voodoo known as the “dismal science.”

“What is the appropriate punishment for financial swindling, a white-collar crime? As an economist, I am not qualified to discuss such an issue. However, I cannot forebear from calling attention to one punishment suggested, or at least mentioned, three times. At the time of the South Sea bubble, one member of the House of Commons, Molesworth, in a speech that Carswell says was thought absurd at the time, considered that Parliament should declare the directors of the South Sea Company guilty of parricide and subject them to the ancient Roman punishment for that transgression—to be sewn into sacks, each with a monkey and a snake, and drowned.”

Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes (1989).

Swindler

A fraud. Someone who cheats people of their money without having to resort to violence. A white-collar criminal.

“Cynics may share the belief of W. C. Fields that ‘You can’t cheat an honest man’ and that victims of swindles have mainly themselves to blame. Mundus vult decipi—ergo decipitatur: the world wants to be deceived, let it therefore be deceived. In the view of psychiatry, I am told, swindler and victim are bound together in a symbiotic, love-hate relationship that both find satisfaction in and depend on.”

Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes (1989).