Forms: 3, 5 sopare, 4, 7 soper, 5 sopere, 6– soaper. [f. SOAP sb. Cf. Du. zeeper soap-boiler.]
1. † a. One who sells soap. Obs. b. A soap-boiler, soap-maker. Now Hist.
c. 1225. Ancr. R., 152. A sopare, þet ne bereð buten sope & nelden, remð & ȝeieð lude & heie þet he bereð.
1393. Langl., P. Pl., C. VI. 72. Sopers and here sones for seluer han be knyghtes.
14[?]. Lat.-Eng. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 612. Smigmator, a sopere.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 465/1. Sopare, marchaunt…, saponarius.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Xabonero, a soaper, Saponarius.
1632. in Rymer, Fœdera (1732), XIX. 381. Divers Persons in … the Society of Sopers within the Citty of Westminster.
1641. Short Relation conc. Soap-Business, 12. The white soape made by the Soapers of Westminster spoyled and burnt the Linnen.
1805. R. W. Dickson, Pract. Agric., I. 247. The waste of soapers … may be made use of in the same way.
1825. Jamieson, Suppl., Soaper, a soap-boiler; Aberd[een].
1828. D’Israeli, Charles I., II. i. 21. It was urged that barrels of the new soap had been sophisticated by the malice of the old soapers.
attrib. 1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 594. [For making] Green window glass, or broad glass.… 10 pounds of soaper salts [etc.].
c. In collocations, as soaper’s ashes, liquor, lye, waste. (Cf. SOAP-BOILER 1 b.)
1725. Family Dict., s.v., Blood-running Itch, Others wash the Horse once or twice in Soaper’s Liquor.
1766. Museum Rusticum, VI. 309. To make a trial … betwixt these ashes … and soapers waste.
1793. Trans. Soc. Arts, V. 48. Seed steeped in Soaper’s ashes.
1817–8. Cobbett, Resid. U. S. (1822), 76. I see people go with their wagons five miles for soaper’s ashes; that is to say, spent ashes.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 331/2. The remaining liquor … is commonly called soaper’s lye.
2. techn. (See quot.)
1909. Cent. Dict., Suppl., Soaper.… In calico-printing, a machine in which the cloth is washed with soap.
