Jump to: TA TE TH TI TO TR TU TW TY
Guide
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Recent changes as of 2015-03-22
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taberdar
Also: taubator, tabbiter, tabitter, taberder, tabardar
- •one who wears a tabard
(=a short surcoat or jerkin with short or no sleeves)
- •a name formerly given to certain scholars of Queen's College, Oxford,
from the gown they wore,
still surviving in the name of some of the scholarships at that college.
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taborer
Also: taberer, tabborer, tabourier, tabrere
- •one who tabors;
a drummer;
one who performs on the tabor
(=a small drum).
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tailor
- •one who makes, repairs or alters articles of clothing,
as suits, coats, dresses, etc.
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taipan
- •China the head of a foreign business.
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talesman
- •Law a person summoned by a tales
(=a writ summoning jurors when a panel is insufficient)
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tallyman
- •a person who keeps a tally, or count.
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tanner
- •one who tans (cures) animal hides into leather.
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tapissier
- •a maker of tapestries
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tapley
- •one who puts the tap in an ale cask
(tap=a wooden spigot placed in the bunghole of a cask to facilitate drawing off its contents)
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tapster
- •a bartender.
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tar baby
- •a situation or problem from which it is difficult or impossible to extricate oneself.
(=After Bre'r Rabbit and the Tar Baby, an Uncle Remus story by Joel Chandler Harris.)
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tasker
- •a reaper
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taster
- •a person employed to test food or drink by tasting it,
esp. for quality or hist to detect poisoning.
- cf salvor
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tatter
- •one who tats
(tatting=needlework consisting of handmade lace made by looping and knotting a single thread on a small shuttle)
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tattler
- •a prattler; a gossip.
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taverner
- •one who owns or operates a tavern.
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taxidermist
- •one skilled in the art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of
animals with lifelike effect.
(=Gk taxis arrangement + derma skin)
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taxman
- •an inspector or collector of taxes.
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teacher
- •one who teaches, esp. one hired for this purpose.
- cf tutor
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teamster
- •one who drives a team (of horses, oxen, etc.) for hauling.
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teaseler
- •one who dresses cloth with teasels.
(teasel=a plant with a large prickly head like a thistle, which is dried and used to raise the nap on woven cloth.)
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tedder
- •one who teds (=turns and spreads) hay, grass, straw, etc.
to effect its drying, or for a bedding.
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tenant
- •a person who rents land or property from a landlord.
- tenant farmer
- •one who farms on rented lands,
esp where the rent is paid in kind out of the produce.
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tenant-in-chief
- •a lord (or an institution, such as a church) holding land directly from the
king. cf under-tenant
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tenter
- •assistant to a weaver, generally a child, who has
gone through a short period of probation.
- •a worker's unskilled assistant.
- •Brit one in charge of something, esp. machinery in a factory.
- •one who stretches cloth on a tent or tenter (with tenter hooks)
to allow it to dry, the last stage of cloth-making.
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tertiary
- •RCC a member of a religious Third Order
(=a confraternity of lay persons associated with a religious order)
[AHD]
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testator
(~trix)
- •one who has made a will, esp one who dies testate
(=having died leaving a valid will.)
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texter
- •one skilled in writing in a text hand (a fine, large hand),
an engrosser.
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textor
- •a weaver
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thane
- •hist a man who held land from an English king or other superior by military service,
ranking between ordinary freemen and hereditary nobles.
- •a man who held land from a Scottish king and ranked with an earl's son;
the chief of a clan.
- •Brit Hist the order of nobility in Anglo-Saxon England before the Conquest was earl, King’s thegn and median thegn.
[DOME]
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thatcher
- •a roofer, esp. of thatched materials: straw, reeds, etc.
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thegn
(OE )(=thane)
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thrall
- •hist a slave; a bondman,
or one otherwise in a state of servitude to another.
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thumper
- •an extravagantly enthusiastic preacher
(=from "Bible thumper", as such preachers were given to emphasizing their points)
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tide waiter
- •civ a customs officer
(=who waited on the tide to collect duty on goods brought in)
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tinker
- •an itinerant seller and repairman of tin pots and pans
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tinsmith
- •a smith who works in tin
Also: whitesmith
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tipstaff
- •a sheriff's officer.
(=From the metal-tipped staff carried as a symbol of office.)
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tithing
- •a group of people who are liable to pay a tithe
(=a tax to support the parish).
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tithing man
Also: tyth~
- •civ a town official appointed to enforce the laws and to see that order was preserved in the Lord's house;
tithing men were to present all the idle and disorderly persons, profane swearers or cursors, Sabbath-breakers and disorderly persons, that they may be duly punished and discouraged.
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toad-eater
- •originally a seventeenth-century charlatan's sidekick who,
in full view of a crowd, would pretend to eat a toad,
which at that time was considered to be poisonous.
The assistant would feign a severe reaction, to the horror or amusement of the naïve spectators.
The master would then dramatically demonstrate the curative power of the remedy he had for sale by using it to revive his
sidekick.
A corresponding verb, toad-eat, emerged shortly thereafter;
it meant "to do something quite unpleasant on behalf of one's master."
[Research on Forgotten
English Words]
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tonsor
- •one who shaved or otherwise cut hair.
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top banana
- •slang the main comic in a burlesque show.
(=so called from the presentation of a banana to the comedian who has the punch line in a three-person burlesque routine.)
[AHD]
- •the head person, as of a group or project.
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top dog
- •slang one with the dominant position or authority,
esp. in a competitive context.
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Tory
- •Brit colloq (=Conservative)
- •Brit hist a member of the party that opposed the exclusion of James II
and later supported the established religious and political order
and gave rise to the Conservative party (opp Whig).
- •a colonist loyal to the English during the American Revolution.
- cf refugee
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tow head
- •a person with white-blond hair.
(tow=flax or hemp fiber prepared for spinning)
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town crier
- see crier
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trader
- •a person engaged in trade
(=buying and selling)
- •a merchant ship
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translator
- •one who translates (speech, writings, etc.) from one language into another.
- cf interpreter
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traveler
sp: or trav-el-ler
- •one who travels or has traveled, as to distant places, esp. habitually.
- •Brit a traveling salesperson.
- •Brit a member of various groups of traditionally itinerant people living esp in
Scotland and Ireland;
a gypsy.
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travers
- •toll bridge collector
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trull
- •a prostitute, a harlot.
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tucker
- •cleaner of cloth goods
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turner
- •a person who turns wood on a lathe into spindles or similar items
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tutee
- •one being tutored.
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tutor
- •a private teacher,
perhaps giving additional, special or remedial instruction.
- •a teacher or teaching assistant in some colleges or
universities having rank below that of instructor.
- •Brit a graduate, or fellow, responsible for supervision of
an undergraduate at some British universities.
- •Law a legal guardian of a minor.
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twister
- •a spinner in a cloth-making operation,
spec.
one whose occupation is to twist together the ends of the yarns of the
new warp to those already woven. [OED]
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Typhoid Mary
- •An Irish immigrant, Mary Mallon [1869-1938], who was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in the early 1900s. (=a Salmonella disease)
She infected some 50 people in NYC.
- •Any similar carrier of disease.
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tyro
sp: Brit Also: tiro
- •a beginner, a novice.
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