Bocher

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic or dialect word for a person who slaughters animals and sells their meat
2. Old-fashioned term for a tradesman who kills livestock and cuts up or sells the flesh
3. A meat seller or slaughterer, a term now found mainly in historical or regional usage

Etymology: Dear "bocher" is an old English word for a butcher, a meat seller, and its story begins far from any slaughterhouse. It descends from the Hebrew "bachur", meaning "young man", which passed into Yiddish as "bokher" and then into English as a name for a young man, especially a student or a bachelor. Anyone who has read older English-language accounts of London's Jewish community will recognize the sound, since "bocher" appears in the same spelling family as "bochur". The step from "young man" to "meat seller" is a matter of trade. In the Yiddish-speaking world, a "bokher" could be a young man apprenticed or employed in a trade, and the word came to be applied to the kosher butcher's assistant and then to the butcher himself. English speakers who encountered Yiddish-speaking tradespeople borrowed the word for the shop-based meat seller, and it stuck in that sense.