litster

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

litster (plural litsters)

1. (archaic, Britain, Scotland) A dyer.
   • 1995, Richard H. Saunders, John Smibert: Colonial America's First Portrait Painter, Yale University Press (1995), →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 (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 (2010), →ISBN, unnumbered page:

     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 examples of usage of this term, see Citations:litster.

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