Jade

A strumpet. A prostitute.

"Neither your noble blood and rank nor your education sufficed to keep you from falling a slave to pleasure; youthful follies ran away with you. Your luckless curiosity earned you a sinister punishment. But blind Fortune, after tossing you maliciously about from peril to peril has somehow, without thinking what she was doing, landed you here in religious felicity. Let her begone now and fume furiously where she pleases, let her find some other plaything for her cruel hands. She has no power to hurt those who devote their lives to the honour and service of our Goddess's majesty. The jade!"

Apuleius, The Golden Ass, (2nd Century A.D.)

[translated by Robert Graves].

Ritualist

One versed in rituals. One practiced in symbolic religious rites. A priest in Heian Japan.

"One has visited a shrine or a temple with the request that certain prayers be said on one's behalf. What a pleasure to hear the ritualist or priest intone them in a better voice, and more fluently, than one had expected!"

Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book (11th Century).

[Translated by Ivan Morris.]

Bulldog

A proctor's constable (at Cambridge University).

"The records of the nineteenth century shed light on the trades which surrounded undergraduates and academics alike: ink-sellers, japanners, auctioneers, breech-cleaners, and bacon-sellers, with a victualler who was also a stay-maker, but the Proctors' trade of 1852 seemed reassuringly familiar in its triviality... I shan't forget the image of Bulldog Harvey, megaphone to his lips outside Schools, shouting 'Don't spray it, drink it.'"

Frank Stubbings, Bedders, Bulldogs and Bedells: A Cambridge ABC (1991)

Quack

Someone who pretends to be a doctor or to have knowledge of medicine.

"A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills."

George Crabbe, The Village (1783)

Navigator

A sailor or seaman skilled and experienced in the art of navigation.

"Muhammad ibn-Babishad added, 'If you are on the sea and you want to know whether you are near the land or a mountain, look out in the afternoon when the sun is going down; if when it goes down there is actually a mountain or island on the opposite horizon, it will be visible then.'"

Buzurg ibn Shahriyar of Ramhurmuz, Kitab 'aja'ib al-Hind (mid-10th century A.D.)

translated in Le livre des merveilles de l'Inde (1883-86).

Quoted in George F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring (1951)

The Naked Porter and Ten Professional Wrestlers

Someone who has charge of a gate, letting people in or keeping people out.

"Once outside in the courtyard I called out: 'Hey, porter, where are you? Open the gate, I want to be off before daybreak.' He was lying naked on the bare ground beside the gate and answered, still half-asleep: 'Who's that? Who's asking to get off at this time of night? Don't you know, whoever you are, that the roads are swarming with bandits? You may be tired of life, or you may have some crime on your conscience, but don't think that I'm such a pumpkin-headed idiot as to risk my life for yours by opening the gate and letting them in.' I protested: 'But it's almost morning. And anyhow, what harm could bandits do you? Certainly I think you are an idiot to be afraid of them. A team of ten professional wrestlers couldn't take anything worth having from a man as naked as you are.'"

Apuleius, The Golden Ass (2nd Century A.D.)

[translated by Robert Graves].

Fraud

One who defrauds others of their money. A confidence man. A scam artist.

"Hearken also to Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering of riches: He who maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent. The poets feign, that when Plutus (which is riches) is sent from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly; but when he is sent from Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot; meaning, that riches gotten by good means and just labor pace slowly; but when they come by the death of others (as by the course of inheritance, testaments, and the like), they come tumbling upon a man. But it might be applied likewise to Pluto, taking him for the devil (as by fraud and oppression, and unjust means), they come upon speed. The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul: parsimony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent; for it withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity."

Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Riches (1625)