litster

From Middle English litestere, from liten (“to dye”) (from Old Norse litr) + -stere (see -ster).[1]

litster (plural litsters)

1. (archaic, UK, Scotland) A dyer.
   • 1995, Richard H. Saunders, John Smibert: Colonial America's First Portrait Painter, Yale University Press, →ISBN, pages 1–2:

     But it was the woolen industry that provided the elder Smibert with a livelihood, for as a litster he spent his days dyeing wool, which was then woven into cloth.

   • 2002, Margaret H. B. Sanderson, A Kindly Place?: Living in Sixteenth-Century Scotland, Tuckwell Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 122:

     Other women ran businesses that required reliance on a network of suppliers, sometimes of raw materials. Isobel Provand in the Canongate was a litster.

   • 2008, Shona Maclean, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton‎, Penguin Canada, published 2010, →ISBN:

     The smell of the tanners' and the litsters' work still hung in the night air, although they had long since gone to their weary beds.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:litster.

• litters, retilts, slitter, stilter, tilters, titlers