Dictionary

litster en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English litestere, from liten (“to dye”) (from Old Norse litr) + -stere (see -ster).

Meanings

1. (Scotland, UK, archaic) A dyer.
   • Other women ran businesses that required reliance on a network of suppliers, sometimes of raw materials. Isobel Provand in the Canongate was a litster. 2002, Margaret H. B. Sanderson, A Kindly Place?: Living in Sixteenth-Century Scotland, Tuckwell Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 122:
   • 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. 2008, Shona Maclean, The Redemption of Alexander Seaton, Penguin Canada, published 2010, →ISBN:
   • 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. 1995, Richard H. Saunders, John Smibert: Colonial America's First Portrait Painter, Yale University Press, →ISBN, pages 1–2:

Forms