A professional singer who entertains people at social gatherings. A wandering musician. A minstrel.
"Bledgaret passede alle his predecessoures in musik and in melodie, so that he was i-cleped god of glee men."
John De Trevisa, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden (1387).
An officer in the army or navy who pays troops or workmen.
"Both good and evil are sure paymasters at the last."
Bishop Joseph Hall, Contemplations (1615).
A delegate, ambassador, or messenger. An ecclesiastic with the authority to represent the Pope.
"He suffered the legates from Utrecht to return with their heads upon their shoulders."
John Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1855).
A chief, president, superintendent, ruler, manager, or overseer, in religious, military, educational, and secular settings. An officer charged wtih apprehending, imprisoning, and punishing miscreants.
"Among the apprehenders, the chief are called Provosts, and they of old had power to hang vagabonds."
Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1617).
A prostitute for whom the street serves as a drafty reception hall.
"On rainy night thy breath blows chill
In the street-walker's dripping hair."
Buchanan, Poems, Pan Epilogue (1870).
Someone who navigates a scow, which is a wide, flat boat with square ends used for transporting material.
"He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judged it made him blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was; because he was brimful, and here were subjects who could talk back. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with."
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883).
In a religious hierarchy, the archbishop is the leader of a phalanx of bishops and their subordinates. Only capable of moving diagonally.
“It is a matter of temperament and belief whether you read this list with respect or with boredom; whether you look upon an archbishop’s hat as a crown or as an extinguisher. If, like the present reviewer, you are ready to hold the simple faith that the outer order corresponds to the inner—that a vicar is a good man, a canon a better man, and an archbishop the best man of all—you will find the study of the Archbishop’s life one of extreme fascination. He has turned aside from poetry and philosophy and law, and specialized in virtue. He has dedicated himself to the service of the Divine. His spiritual proficiency has been such that he has developed from deacon to dean, from dean to bishop, and from bishop to archbishop in the short space of twenty years. As there are only two archbishops in the whole of England the inference seems to be that he is the second best man in England; his hat is the proof of it. Even in a material sense his hat was one of the largest; it was larger than Mr. Gladstone’s; larger than Thackeray’s; larger than Dickens’; it was in fact, so his hatter told him and we are inclined to agree, an ‘eight full.’”
Virginia Woolf, “Outlines,” The Common Reader (1925).
