tanner

tanner¹ one who tans hides

Etymology

The worker in leather is inherited from Old English tannere,^[2][3][4][5] an agent noun formed from tannian (“to tan hides”) and -ere,^[3][5][4] and in part borrowed from Old French tanere, the nominative of taneor.^[2][5][6] The OED thinks the modern word may in fact continue the French one, which goes back to Latin tannātor.^[2] The Old English verb, recorded only in the past participle “getanned”, is probably from Medieval Latin tannō (“to tan”), from tannum (“crushed oak bark”), which is apparently of Celtic origin.^[2][4][5] The Anglo-Norman form tannur is recorded from 1166–67, also as a surname.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person whose trade is tanning hides into leather: the OED's first record is an Old English charter of King Edgar,^[2] and Dictionary.com dates the word to before 1000.^[8] Bosworth–Toller, which has the word only in a charter boundary, marks the meaning with a query.^[9] Etymonline notes it as a surname by the mid-12th century.^[5]

Semantic evolution

For most of its history the word named only the tradesman,^[2][10] and Johnson (1755) defined it as one whose trade is to tan leather.^[10] In the 1960s it gained a new sense from the verb tan in its meaning of browning the skin: a lotion or cream that promotes a suntan, or produces an artificial one (1969).^[2][6] The OED thinks the variant tanyer was assimilated to words like sawyer, hosier and farrier.^[2] Wright's dialect dictionary records compounds such as tanner's apron for the garden auricula in Gloucestershire.^[11]

Timeline

• Old English – tannere, a tanner, in a charter of King Edgar.^[2]
• 1166–67 – Anglo-Norman tannur, a tanner, also as a surname.^[7]
• 1226 – Old French tanere.^[2]
• 1969 – a lotion or cream for tanning the skin.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who tans hides and skins to make leather.^[12][3][2]
2. A lotion or cream that promotes a suntan or gives the skin an artificial one.^[2][6]

Word family

• tannery

tanner² sixpence

Etymology

The slang word for a sixpence is of unknown or uncertain origin.^{[2][3][6][12][13][14][15]} The OED points to a hearsay account in B. Hooper's “Leather Manufacture” (1891).^[2] Green's Dictionary of Slang mentions two suggestions: Romani tawno (“small”), or a heavy biblical joke on the apostle Peter, who "lodged with one Simon a tanner".^[16] Etymonline reports that the Century Dictionary called the proposed Romani origins doubtful, and that the Victorian slang lexicographer J. C. Hotten thought it might be from “tanner and skin”, rhyming slang for "thin", from the smallness of the coin.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A sixpence: Green's Dictionary of Slang finds it in H. T. Potter's New Dictionary of Cant, written before 1790 and printed in 1795, where simon and the tanner both mean sixpence.^[16] The OED's first record is the Lexicon Balatronicum of 1811,^[2][16] the date Etymonline and Merriam-Webster also give.^[5][3] Weekley dates it to about 1800.^[15]

Semantic evolution

The word was common London slang in the 19th century: Dickens used it in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44), and it reached Australia by 1843.^[16] After the British decimal currency of 1971 replaced the sixpence with 2½p, tanner was used for that sum too.^[16] It is now historical.^[6][12]

Timeline

• before 1790 – the tanner, a sixpence, in Potter's New Dictionary of Cant.^[16]
• 1811 – in the Lexicon Balatronicum.^[2][16]
• 1843 – in Australian use.^[16]
• 1843–44 – in Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. (British, historical slang) A sixpence; after decimalization, two and a half pence.^{[12][3][2][16]}