Cordwainer - 04/13/02 01:01 PM
This one was new to me - I ran across it in yesterday's newspaper, in an article discussion a craft council show I'm going to attend this weekend. If you trust the US media to get etymology right (), then here it is, most of the context preserved:
"They are not cobblers, although they don't balk at that description. Cobblers repair shoes and, in times past, would even reuse leather from worn shoes to make a smaller pair of 'new' shoes, [the artist] said. A cordwainer, by contrast, is someone who works with new leather. Now virtually obsolete, the term derived from cordovan, a fine-grained leather originally made in Cordova, Spain."
Maybe the etymology doesn't qualify as particularly unusual, but I found it an interesting word that might be worth some discussion!
"They are not cobblers, although they don't balk at that description. Cobblers repair shoes and, in times past, would even reuse leather from worn shoes to make a smaller pair of 'new' shoes, [the artist] said. A cordwainer, by contrast, is someone who works with new leather. Now virtually obsolete, the term derived from cordovan, a fine-grained leather originally made in Cordova, Spain."
Maybe the etymology doesn't qualify as particularly unusual, but I found it an interesting word that might be worth some discussion!