hodman
(ˈhɒdmən)
[f. hod n.1 1 + man.]
1. A man who carries on his shoulder the hod supplying builders with mortar (which he also prepares), bricks, or stones; a ‘bricklayer's labourer’. (Now very rarely used in the trade.)
| 1587 Fleming Contn. Holinshed III. 1541/2 They were onlie good dikers and hodmen. 1706 Phillips (ed. Kersey), Hod-man, a Labourer that bears a Hod. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. III. i. v, One of them..said, He was as weary as a hodman that had been beating plaster. 1848 Mill Pol. Econ. i. ii. §8 (1876) 26 The stupidest hodman, who repeats from day to day the mechanical act of climbing a ladder. |
2. fig. a. One who more or less mechanically supplies material to a constructive worker. b. A mechanical worker in literature, a literary hack.
| 1829 Carlyle in Froude Life (1882) II. 79 They [political economists] are the hodmen of the intellectual edifice, who have got upon the wall, and will insist on building as if they were the masons. 1849 Miss Mulock Ogilvies xxv. (1875) 185 A sort of literary hodman. 1887 Sir J. D. Hooker in Darwin's Life & Lett. I. 347 This generous appreciation of the hod-men of science, and their labours. |
3. A term of contempt applied by undergraduates of Christ Church, Oxford, who were King's Scholars of Westminster School, to those who were not, and hence to men of other colleges.
| 1677 Littleton Lat. Dict., A Hodman, in Christchurch at Oxford. Advena, alienigena (quippe quod Alumni Regii e Schola Westmonasteriensi eo adsciti se pro Indigenis habeant). 1721 Amherst Terræ Fil. No. 1 The men [of Christ Church] gave themselves airs..those of other Colleges were ‘squils’ and ‘hodmen’. |
¶ Variously misexplained in dicts.: see quots.
| 1706 Phillips (ed. Kersey), Hodman,..a young Scholar admitted from Westminster-School to be a Student in Christ's-Church College in Oxford. [Followed by Chambers (1727), Rees (1819), etc.] 1847–78 Halliwell, Hodman, a nickname for a canon of Christ Church, Oxford. |