[f. FETCH v. + -ER1.]
1. One who or that which fetches, in various senses of the verb. Also in phrase fetcher and carrier, and in comb., as water-fetcher, etc.
1552. Heloet, Fetcher of water. Aquarius.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Faiseur de soubresaults, a fetcher of gamboldes, a tumbler.
1601. J. Weever, The Mirror of Martyrs, B vij. The fetcher of Euridice from hell.
1751. Gray, Wks. (1825), II. 161. You will take me for a mere poet and a fetcher and carrier of sing-song.
a. 1863. Thackeray, Mr. & Mrs. Berry, ii. The poor fellow has been employed … in the same office of fetcher and carrier.
1877. Kinglake, Crimea, VI. vi. 97. The wood and the water fetchers went out.
† b. spec. (see quot. 1890). Obs.
1890. P. H. Brown, George Buchanan, ii. 27. Lads proceeding to Cambridge from the remoter districts went in a body under a ‘fetcher.’
1892. Quarterly Review, CLXXIV. Jan., 24. The students of all all ages, from those of eighteen or twenty to those of twelve, who were collected by ‘fetchers,’ brought to Oxford, and placed in some monastic or licensed grammar school, were taught the formal rules of the Latin language in the works of Priscian or Donatus.
2. With advbs., as fetcher in.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, I. 167.
| Of fight (the fetcher in of this) | |
| My hands haue most share. |
1660. Howell, Lexicon, A Fetcher in; Ameneur.
