75 Names of Unusual or Obsolete Occupations

75 Names of Unusual or Obsolete Occupations 75 Names of Unusual or Obsolete Occupations 75 Names of Unusual or Obsolete Occupations By Mark Nichol The English language abounds with word describing occupations and professions that are rare or obsolete or are otherwise unusual and hence obscure. Here is an incomplete but extensive list of such terms, along with brief definitions. 1. ackerman: a plowman or oxherder 2. alewife: a proprietor of a tavern 3. alnager: a wool inspector 4. arkwright: a carpenter specializing in wooden chests 5. bowyer: a bowmaker 6. brazier: a brass worker 7. catchpole: an official who pursues those with delinquent debts 8. caulker: someone who packs seams in ships or around windows 9. chandler: a candlemaker, or a retail supplier of specific equipment 10. chiffonier: a wigmaker 11. cobbler: a shoemaker 12. collier: a coal miner or a maker of charcoal (also, a ship that transports coal) 13. cooper: a maker or repairer of barrels, casks, and tubs 14. cordwainer: a shoemaker 15. costermonger: a fruit seller 16. crocker: a potter 17. currier: a leather tanner, or a horse groom 18. draper: a cloth dealer 19. drayman: a driver of a heavy freight cart 20. drummer: a traveling salesman 21. duffer: a peddler 22. eggler: an egg seller 23. factor: an agent or steward 24. farrier: someone who trims horse hooves and puts on horseshoes 25. fishmonger: a fish seller 26. fletcher: a maker of arrows 27. fuller: someone who shrinks and thickens wool cloth 28. glazier: a glassmaker or window maker 29. haberdasher: an owner of or worker in a store for men’s clothing or small items used for making clothes 30. hawker: a peddler 31. hayward: an official responsible for fences and hedges 32. higgler: a peddler of dairy products and small game (also, a haggler, or someone who negotiates for lower prices) 33. hobbler: a person who tows boats on a canal or river 34. hooper: a maker of hoops for barrels, casks, and tubs 35. hostler or ostler: one who cares for horses or mules, or moves or services locomotives (originally, an innkeeper, who also maintained stables) 36. huckster: a peddler (now refers to a con artist) 37. ice cutter: someone who saws blocks of ice for refrigeration 38. ironmonger: a seller of items made of iron 39. joiner: a carpenter who specializes in furniture and fittings 40. keeler: a crew member on a barge or a keelboat 41. knacker: one who buys animals or animal carcasses to use as animal food or as fertilizer (originally, a harness maker or saddle maker) 42. knocker-up: a professional waker, who literally knocks on doors or windows to rouse people from sleep 43. lamplighter: someone who lights, extinguishes, and refuels gas street lamps 44. lapidary: a jeweler 45. lector: someone who reads to factory workers for entertainment 46. log driver: someone who floats and guides logs downriver for transportation 47. milliner: a designer, maker, or seller of women’s hats 48. muleskinner: a wagon driver 49. peruker: a wigmaker 50. pinsetter: someone who sets bowling pins back up after each bowl 51. plowright: a maker of plows and other farm implements 52. plumber: originally, one who installed lead roofing or set lead frames for windows 53. porter: a doorkeeper or gatekeeper 54. puddler: a worker in wrought iron 55. quarryman: a stonecutter 56. raker: a street cleaner 57. resurrectionist: someone who digs up recently buried corpses for use as cadavers 58. ripper: a fish seller 59. roper: a maker of nets and ropes 60. sawyer: a carpenter 61. slater: a roofer 62. slopseller: a seller of ready-made clothing, as opposed to a tailor 63. stevedore: a dockworker 64. tanner: someone who cures animal hides to make leather 65. teamster: a wagon driver 66. thatcher: someone who makes thatched roofs 67. tinker: a repairer or seller of small metal goods such as pots and pans 68. turner: someone who uses a lathe to turn wood for balustrades and spindles 69. victualer: an innkeeper, or a merchant who provides food for ships or for the military 70. wainwright: a wagon maker 71. webster: a weaver 72. weirkeeper: a fish trapper 73. wharfinger: an owner or operator of a wharf 74. wheelwright: a maker of wheels for carriages and wagons 75. whitesmith: a worker of tin Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Apply to, Apply for, and Apply withHow to Play HQ Words: Cheats, Tips and Tricks15 English Words of Indian Origin

Erving Goffman - Biography and Works

Erving Goffman - Biography and Works Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was a major Canadian-American sociologist who played a significant role in the development of modern American sociology. He is considered by some to be the most influential sociologist of the 20th century, thanks to his many significant and lasting contributions to the field.  He is widely known and celebrated as a major figure in the development of  symbolic interaction theory  and for developing the dramaturgical perspective. His most widely read works include  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life  and  Stigma: Notes the Management of Spoiled Identity. Major Contributions Goffman is credited for making significant contributions to the field of sociology. He is considered a pioneer of micro-sociology, or the close examination of the social interactions that compose everyday life. Through this type of work, Goffman presented evidence and theory for the social construction of the self as it is presented to and managed for others, created the concept of framing and the perspective of frame analysis, and set the foundation for the study of impression management. In addition, through his study of social interaction, Goffman made a lasting mark on how sociologists understand and study stigma and how it affects the lives of people who experience it. His studies also laid the groundwork for the study of strategic interaction within game theory and laid the foundation for the method and subfield of conversation analysis. Based on his study of mental institutions, Goffman created the concept and framework for studying total institutions and the process of resocialization that takes place within them. Early Life and Education Erving Goffman was born June 11, 1922, in Alberta, Canada. His parents, Max and Anne Goffman, were Ukrainian Jews and had emigrated to Canada prior to his birth. After his parents moved to Manitoba, Goffman attended St. Johns Technical High School in Winnipeg and in 1939 he began his university studies in chemistry at the University of Manitoba. Goffman would later switch to studying sociology at the University of Toronto and completed his B.A. in 1945. Following that, Goffman enrolled at the University of Chicago for graduate school and completed a Ph.D. in sociology in 1953. Trained in the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology, Goffman conducted ethnographic research  and studied symbolic interaction theory. Among his major influences were Herbert Blumer, Talcott Parsons, Georg Simmel, Sigmund Freud, and Émile  Durkheim. His first major study, for his doctoral dissertation, was an account of everyday social interaction and rituals on Unset, an island among the Shetland Islands chain in Scotland (Communication Conduct in an Island Community, 1953). Goffman married Angelica Choate in 1952 and a year later the couple had a son, Thomas. Sadly, Angelica committed suicide in 1964 after suffering from mental illness. Career and Later Life Following the completion of his Ph.D. and his marriage, Goffman took a job at the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, MD. There, he conducted participant observation research for what would be his second book,  Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, published in 1961. He described how this process of institutionalization socializes people into the role of a good patient (i.e. someone dull, harmless and inconspicuous), which in turn reinforces the notion that severe mental illness is a chronic state. Goffmans first book, published in 1956, and arguably his most widely taught and famous work, is titled  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Drawing on his research in the Shetland Islands, it is in this book that Goffman laid out his dramaturgical approach to studying the minutiae of everyday face-to-face interaction. He used the imagery of the theater to portray the importance of human and social action. All actions, he argued, are social performances that aim to give and maintain certain desired impressions of oneself to others. In social interactions, humans are actors on a stage playing a performance for an audience. The only time that individuals can be themselves and get rid of their role or identity in society is backstage where no audience is present. Goffman took a faculty position in the department of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley in 1958. In 1962 he was promoted to full professor. A few years later, in 1968, he was appointed the Benjamin Franklin Chair in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience  is another of Goffman’s well-known books, published in 1974. Frame analysis is the study of the organization of social experiences and so with his book, Goffman wrote about how conceptual frames structure an individual’s perception of society. He used the concept of a picture frame to illustrate this concept. The frame, he described, represents structure and is used to hold together an individual’s context of what they are experiencing in their life, represented by a picture. In 1981 Goffman married Gillian Sankoff, a sociolinguist. Together the two had a daughter, Alice, who was born in 1982. Sadly, Goffman died of stomach cancer that same year. Today, Alice Goffman is a notable sociologist in her own right. Awards and Honors Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969)Guggenheim Fellowship (1977-78)Cooley-Mead Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Second on Social Psychology, American Sociological Association (1979)73rd President of the American Sociological Association (1981-82)Mead Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems (1983)6th most cited author in humanities and social sciences in 2007 Other Major Publications Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (1961)Behavior in Public Places (1963)Interaction Ritual (1967)Gender Advertisements (1976)Forms of Talk (1981)