sawyer

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sawier, also sawyer,^[2][3][4] an alteration of sawer, formed from Middle English sawen (“to saw”) + -er, with the ending changed to the French-derived -ier of lawyer, bowyer and clothier.^[5][6][7][8] The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster derive it from the verb sawen,^[9][2] and the Shorter Oxford from the noun saw;^[10] the noun is sawe, from Old English sagu.^[9][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A workman who saws timber, especially in a saw pit: 1350, in the Memorials of London.^[5] Etymonline dates the earlier forms sawer and sauere to the mid-13th century, and the word as a surname to about 1200.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The plain form sawer survived beside it but became rare as a job title;^[5] it was still used in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire dialect around 1900.^[11] Johnson (1755) gave both forms for one who saws timber into boards or beams.^[12] In America the word gained two new senses in the late 18th century.^[5][10] A sawyer was a wood-boring beetle (1789), whose larvae damage pines;^[5][10][13] and a tree fallen into a river and held by one end, its branches rising and falling in the current (1786),^[5][10] a danger to boats on the Mississippi and the Missouri that Bartlett called a truly American word.^[14] The Oxford Dictionary of English explains the name by the back-and-forth movement of the trapped log.^[15] In Norfolk the name was also given to the merganser.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – as a surname.^[7]
• 1350 – a person who saws timber.^[5]
• 1379 – the form sawer.^[5]
• 1786 – in America, a tree fallen into a river.^[5]
• 1789 – a wood-boring beetle.^[5][13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person whose work is sawing timber, as in a sawmill or over a saw pit.^[4][2][5]
2. Any of several wood-boring longhorn beetles whose larvae tunnel into conifers.^[2][10]
3. (US) A tree that has fallen into a river and is held fast at one end, bobbing in the current.^[10][2][5]

Word family

• undersawyer

Related words

• saw
• lawyer
• bowyer
• clothier
• sawer

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
10. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
14. ^ Bartlett, John Russell (1848), Dictionary of Americanisms, New York: Bartlett and Welford
15. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press