Quean

A harlot.

"All spent in a Taverne amongst a consort of queanes and fidlers."

Thomas Nashe, An Almond for a Parrot (1589).

Mad-doctor

Someone who treats the mentally ill.

"Clearheaded, logical men of sense, these mad-doctors."

William Schwenk Gilbert, Foggerty's Fairy and other tales (1881).

Douzeper

One of the twelve French peers or companions who formed a guard of honor for Charlemagne. Great nobles or knights.

"Big looking like a doughty Doucepere,

At last he thus: 'Thou clod of vilest clay,

I pardon yield, and with thy rudeness bear.'"

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590).

Pioneer

Foot soldiers who march ahead of the main army, equipped with pickaxes and shovels, to dig ditches, fell trees, build or repair roads, and generally to clear the way for the others to follow.

"To every thousand Souldiers, there be allotted one hundred pioneers, to be provided with Pickaxes, Shovels, Hatchets, Bills and the like."

Proclamation in Maldon Essex Borough Deeds (1626).

Radknight

A tenant who holds land on the condition of doing the landlord service on horseback.

"The Rad-knights, who by the tenure of their lands, were bound to ride with or for the lord, as often as his affairs required."

Thomas Pennant, A tour in Wales 1773 (1778-81).

Jack of All Trades

Expert of none.

"I know one 'jack-of-all-trades', scholar of Greek and Latin, mathematician, philosopher, doctor, all in princely style, a man already in his sixties, who has thrown up everything else and spent twenty years vexing and tormenting himself over grammar. He supposes he'd be perfectly happy if he were allowed to live long enough to define precisely how the eight parts of speech should be distinguished, something in which no one writing in Greek or Latin has ever managed to be entirely successful. And then if anyone treats a conjunction as a word with the force of an adverb, it's a thing to go to war about."

Erasmus, Praise of Folly, (1509)

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

Ruffian

A protector of prostitutes.

"The Common sorte lodge with baudes called Ruffians, to whom in Venice they pay of their gayne the fifth part."

Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1618).