milliner

See also: Milliner

English
WOTD – 27 May 2024

Etymology
A milliner (sense 2) at work.

The noun is a variant of Milaner (“(obsolete) inhabitant or native of Milan”) (referring to the importation and sale of women’s apparel, etc., made in Milan: see sense 1), from Late Middle English Milener, Miloner (“native of Milan”),[1] from Milan[2] + -er(e) (suffix denoting an inhabitant or resident).[3][4]

The verb is derived from the noun.[5]

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈmɪlɪnə/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • (General American) enPR: mĭ'lə-nər, IPA(key): /ˈmɪlənəɹ/
  • Homophone: Milaner
  • Hyphenation: mil‧lin‧er

Noun

milliner (plural milliners)

  1. (archaic) A person who sells (women's) apparel, accessories, and other decorative goods, especially those originally manufactured in Milan.
  2. (specifically) A person involved in the design, manufacture, or sale of hats for women.
    Hypernyms: hatmaker, hatter
    • 1713 September 12 (Gregorian calendar), [John Gay], “Tuesday, September 1. 1713.”, in The Guardian, number 149, London: […] J[acob] Tonson […]; and sold by A. Baldwin […], →OCLC, page [2], column 1:
      The Milliner muſt be thoroughly verſed in Phyſiognomy; in the Choice of Ribbons ſhe muſt have a particular regard to the Complexion, and muſt ever be mindful to cut the Head-dreſs to the Dimentions of the Face.
    • 1847, M[ary] J. Howell, “Lesson II. On Lining Straw and Other Bonnets.”, in The Hand-book of Millinery; […], London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 24:
      The great difficulty generally experienced by amateur milliners in lining bonnets, is mainly attributable to the error of fixing the lining in the first instance to the edge of the bonnet, instead of arranging it previously at the head part.
    • 1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James II, volume I, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 346:
      Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came down from London [to Tunbridge Wells], and opened a bazaar under the trees.
    • 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, “Some Old Scenes, and Some New People”, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC, page 235:
      She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town.
    • 1859 September 10, “Perkins’s Purple”, in Charles Dickens, editor, All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. [...] With which is Incorporated Household Words, volume I, number 20, London: […] C. Whiting, […], →OCLC, page 470, column 1:
      We may, therefore, fairly suppose that the first milliner was probably contemporaneous with the first woman, and that the carpenters who made the ark were not ignorant of the construction of a bandbox.
    • 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XIX, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, section III, page 243:
      They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm, between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which dissevers fathers and sons Ted chuckled, "Dad, did you ever hear the one about the three milliners and the judge?"
    • 2015, Alison Matthews-David, Fashion Victims: The Damages of Dress Past and Present, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 92:
      In the 1880s, milliners decorated hats with entire stuffed birds.

Coordinate terms

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

milliner (third-person singular simple present milliners, present participle millinering, simple past and past participle millinered) (transitive, archaic)

  1. To manufacture (women's apparel, specifically hats); also, to supply (someone) with women's apparel, specifically hats.
    • 1806 December, “Steuart’s Sallust, and The Eclectic Review”, in The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor, volume XXV, number CII, London: […] B. M‘Millan, […], →OCLC, page 429:
      We pass over his ridiculous observation […] that Sallust has been "man-millinered by Dr. [Henry] Steuart;" for on what we do not understand we can make no remarks.
      A figurative use.
    • 1831, Edward John Trelawny, chapter XLVI, in Adventures of a Younger Son. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 321:
      In the east, the only "study of mankind, is man." They have no Miss [Maria] Edgeworth, nor any of those millinering cutters-out of human nature into certain patterns of given rules in education.
      An adjectival use.
    • 1855 May, “Compton Hall; or, The Recollections of Mr. Benjamin Walker. Chapter XI. A Clue and Its Issue.”, in The Rambler. A Catholic Journal and Review, volume III (New Series), part XVII, London: Burns and Lambert, […], →OCLC, pages 353–354:
      Oh, if I had but a decent little income, enough to make her tolerably comfortable! For you know she couldn't go on millinering if she was married to me. My mother wouldn't stand that.
    • 1858 January 16, Obadiah [pseudonym], “A Morning at a Fashionable Church”, in Harper’s Weekly. A Journal of Civilization, volume II, number 55, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 33, column 4:
      Their eyes were very busy—a millinering I should say. The lady in front of us had her book upside down; the two behind us got into a violent quarrel about somebody's bonnet, which one of the two said was new, while the other pretended it was an old one turned.
      A figurative use.
    • 1886, George Bernard Shaw, chapter III, in Cashel Byron’s Profession. […], London: The Modern Press, […], →OCLC, page 34:
      You will find that my dressmaker, Madame Smith, is to be depended on for work, though she is expensive and dishonest. When we are tired of Wiltstoken, we will go to Paris, and be millinered there; but in the meantime we can resort to Madame Smith.
    • 1921, Rex Beach, “The Chronicle of a Chromatic Bear Hunt”, in Oh, Shoot! Confessions of an Agitated Sportsman, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 94:
      Out on the lake we began to feel more fully the immensity and the desolation of the place. […] Floating all about us were bergs from the size of a water goblet to the size of the Lusitania, […] We traced features of men and shapes of beasts in them. Some wore preposterous hats, millinered by the sun itself.
    • 2003–2004, Henry Bingham, chapter 105, in The Sons of Adam, Garden City, N.Y.: GuildAmerica Books, →ISBN, page 360:
      Tom's hat should have bitten the bullet and surrendered then and there. The battering it took in the next half-minute was indescribable. Tom twisted and wrung it between his fingers. It had arrived at the house a brand-new hat. It would leave a cheaply millinered corpse.
      An adjective use.
    • 2008, Kevin Brown, “Business Not as Usual”, in Fighting Fit: Health, Medicine and War in the Twentieth Century, Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, →ISBN, page 66:
      The crowds of besuited men and millinered women going about their affairs ostensibly as in peacetime and watching the scene cannot remain unaffected by the consequences of what they see.
      An adjective use.
  2. (figurative) To adorn or decorate (something).
    • 1867 April, “Reviews and Literary Notices. The Book of the Sonnet. Edited by Leigh Hunt and S[amuel] Adams Lee. Boston: Roberts Brothers.”, in The Atlantic Monthly. A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics, volume XIX, number CXIV, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, […], →OCLC, page 510, column 2:
      We would not have Poesy to be greatly millinered, whatever fashions other ladies may adopt; and when we meet her corseted in the iron framework of the sonnet's rhymes, and crinolined about with the unyielding drapery of its fourteen lines, we feel that she is no doubt elegantly dressed, but we long to see her in any other attire she is wont to put on.

Translations
to adorn or decorate (something) — see adorn,‎ decorate

References
  1. “Milener, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. “Milan, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  3. “-ē̆r(e, suf.(1)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  4. Compare “milliner, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2024; “milliner, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  5. “milliner, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, July 2023.

Further reading
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