fuster
A saddle tree maker.
Noun
- A saddle tree maker.
- There were the Fusters, not to be confused with Fusters who wove fustians ; the Sadler's Fusters made the wooden frame for saddles, which used to be much more elaborate affairs than our modern saddles are. - 1924,...
- There were some leather-workers, as 4 or 5 curriers or tanners, 2 kissers, 6 or 7 saddlers or fusters. - 1951, Eilert Ekwall, Two early London subsidy rolls, page 86:
- It was the task of the fusters, or joiners, to make the wooden saddlebows while the painters were employed to decorate the completed saddles. - 1995, Kingsley M. Oliver, Hold fast, sit sure: the history of the...
Origin
From Middle English fuster, fuystour, fuystor, from Anglo-Norman fuster, Old French fuyster, fust, ultimately from Latin fūstis. Compare French fût, Old French fustier.
Forms
Verb
- To fret, whine, or complain.
- Nagle also remembers that Blaney 'didn't object to you telling him what one thought ... he didn't like fustering, that wouldn't please him, but he didn't mind you speaking your piece even if he might strongly disagree....
- 'This looks interesting,' I said, to my still-fustering-about-what-he should-do brother. - 2013, Anne Gildea, I've Got Cancer, What's Your Excuse?:, →ISBN:
- “Now, Vera. I said I'd pay for the hack, so you can just stop fustering about it. - 2014, Diana Pharaoh Francis, The Cipher, →ISBN:
- To fuss; to meddle or micromanage.
- Real hep, my people. Fustering mother. Meddling sisters - 1954, Chicago Review - Volume 8, page 103:
- She cannot leave the fustering, festering middle-class world she finds herself in, to embrace her love in 'pagan' intuitiveness; what prevents her is her Christian conscience, which makes her aware of a reality beyond...
- "Let me be!" she imagined Jane Ann Williams exclaiming to a fustering Shirley Kent. - 1997, Sandra Tsing Loh, If You Lived Here, You Would be Home by Now, →ISBN, page 84:
- To become marked with signs of age or decay.
- She will clean her cottage — though its condition of age and fustering decay may render it an almost impossible task. - 1954, Esther Meynell, Small talk in Sussex, page 155:
- When Christ was upon the middle earth the Jews pricked him, his blood sprung up into heaven, his flesh never rotted nor fustered, no more I hope will not thine. - 1989, Margaret Ann Courtney, Folklore & Legends of...
- Up ahead, a bunch of first years – they were from Nine Mile House — feigned to shove another of their party from the bank and down into the shallow burn water below: the flat brown boulders beneath the clear surface...
- To fumble; to work clumsily.
- Before the sun was at it's^([sic]) highest, I almost gave in (admitted) that the Jalap had me bet (beat), because there I was spending more time running like a redshank to the gripe and fustering (fumbling) with the...
- And the poor spailpin fanach running like the devil, his clothes tearing on briars and brambles, and his feet soaking and dirty water running out of his boots, and the three big buckos giving him every dirty look if he...
- If a bream or a perch or a pilchard or a bass revealed its iridescent stomach on the decks of my clipper-ship, whilst crewmen fustered and flapped below the wheelhouse with their buckets and tridents to parse the...
Origin
Possibly related to fuss or fester?