March 30, 2004

Obsolete Occupations Medieval And Obsolete English Trade And Professional Terms
posted by eversohumble 20 years ago
  • cool link! >>Spittleman ~~ Hospital Attendant. ewwwww.....
  • Intersting link - cool to see the link with a whole bunch of surnames which I can only guess came to people as a result of their occupations. Always knew the easy ones like cooper, smith, etc. But I never had even the foggiest about names like Lorimer, Furber, or Fuller
  • Pardoner ~~ One licensed to sell Papal Indulgences Sounds like an easy life to me.
  • Surely vintner isn't obsolete?
  • Vaginarius ... now that's a job description
  • They're not all obsolete -- see the comments to my post about this.
  • whilst studying Latin back in my student days the prof once gave out a list of common occupations in the classical Roman world. my favorite was "plucker of armpit hair", which I tragically do not have the latin trans for anymore. I always thought that would make a GREAT insult to hurl at the unsuspecting...
  • The teams at my undergrad university are (were?) known as the York Yeomen. A lot of people didn't understand the word, and wanted it changed to something banal like "panthers," but, being an early modern Britain history major, I thought it was the coolest name ever.