![]() |
Double barrelled (photo by Fabio Sola Penna) |
COOPER
Noun & verb. Middle English.
[Middle Dutch, Middle Low German kuper, formed as COOP noun.]
A1(a) noun. A skilled worker who makes and repairs wooden vessels
formed of staves and hoops, as casks, tubs, etc, etc. ME
A1(b) noun. A crew member on a ship who repairs casks, etc. E17
A2 noun. A person engaged in the trade of sampling, bottling, or retailing wine. E16
A3 noun. A bottle-basket used in wine cellars. E19
A4 noun. A drink composed of a mixture of stout and porter,
originally drunk by the coopers in breweries. L19
B1 verb trans. Make or repair the staves or hoops of (casks etc.);
equip or secure with hoops. E18
B2 verb trans. Put or stow in casks. M18
B3 verb trans. Followed by up: get into a presentable form. colloquial. E19
B4 verb trans. Ruin, spoil. slang. M19
Oh, and finally, just to show that cooperage is a barrel of laughs:
What do you call a bossy cooper?
A hard caskmaster!
Eh? No? Didn't like that one? Okay ...
![]() |
Barrels, barrels, everywhere, and quite a lot to drink (photo by Magalie L'Abbe) |
Are you a cooper?
Do you have any more barrel jokes?
Do please leave your most tubcentric comments in the box below.
Outside of the not uncommon English occupational surname, I don't think I've knowingly meet an actual 'cooper'? But here's a (tenuous) 'cooper' fact. In 1970 the Brazilian football that went onto win the World Cup was trained by an American doctor specialising in preventive medicine and as a result today "jogging" is translated as “coopering” in Brazilian Portuguese (fazer cooper), the doctor was Dr Kenneth Cooper.
ReplyDeleteWow! That comment has barrels of trivia, tubs of World Cup relevance and casks of cooperage. It's just quite possibly the best comment ever!
DeletePlease could you let me know where I can obtain the vinyl for this? would love to make some for Christmas.Organic wine
ReplyDelete