toxophilite

From Toxophilus, the title of a 1545 book by Roger Ascham intended to mean ‘lover of the bow’, from Ancient Greek τοξον (toxon, “bow”) + φίλος (phílos, “love”) +‎ -ite.

• IPA^(key): /tɒkˈsɒfɪlʌɪt/

toxophilite

1. Pertaining to archery.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 3:

     What causes them to labour at pianoforte sonatas, and to learn four songs from a fashionable master at a guinea a lesson, and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, and to wear Lincoln Green toxophilite hats and feathers, but that they may bring down some "desirable" young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs?

toxophilite (plural toxophilites)

1. Someone keen on or an expert at archery; a lover or practitioner of archery.
   • 1857, Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, Volume the Second, page 100 →ISBN

     Here the gardens of the place encroached with a somewhat wide sweep upon the paddock, and gave ample room for the doings of the toxophilites. Miss Thorne got together such daughters of Diana as could bend a bow, and marshalled them to the targets.