Dictionary

reckonmaster en · NOUN

Etymology

From reckon + master. Compare West Frisian reckenmaster, rekkenmaster (“accountant”), Dutch rekenmeester (“accountant”), German Rechenmeister (“reckoner; arithmetician”).

Meanings

1. (historical, rare) A mathematician or arithmetician.
   • The reckonmasters now had the opportunity to consolidate these favorable associations. Despite their novelty, the arithmetics just described could not fill all the needs of wholesale merchants, bankers, and others with extensive commercial activity. 1960, Journal of the History of Ideas, volume 21:
   • The old choirboy schools still performed their service for the sons of some artisans and petty traders, and more important, the numbers of vernacular schoolteachers and reckonmasters multiplied. 1981, Harvey J. Graff, Literacy and Social Development in the West:
   • For the common Logist, Reckenmaster, or Arithmeticien, in hys vsing of Numbers: of an Vnit, imagineth lesse partes: and calleth them Fractions. 1570, John Dee, in H. Billingsley (trans.) Euclid, Elements of Geometry, Preface

Forms