ˈhemp-dresser
One who hackles hemp.
| a 1659 Cleveland Times 81 No zealous Hemp-dresser yet dipp'd me in The Laver of Adoption from my Sin. 1723 Lond. Gaz. No. 6171/10 Benjamin Bellamy..Hempdresser. |
b. pl. The name of a kind of country-dance.
| 1756 T. Amory J. Buncle (1770) II. 25 We..had the hemp⁓dressers one night, which is, you know..the most difficult, and laborious of all the country dances. 1827 in Hone Every-day Bk. II. 122, I have ‘footed it’ away in Sir Roger de Coverley, the hemp-dressers, &c. |