Clogger

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A craftsman who makes shoes with thick wooden soles, traditionally known as clogs, by carving or shaping the timber
2. A person whose trade is producing wooden-soled footwear, cutting and shaping the wood into clogs
3. Someone who fashions the heavy wooden shoes called clogs, often working in a workshop or small local trade

Etymology: A clogger is, quite plainly, one who clogs, but the word has a surprising pedigree in the suffix that makes it. The ending "-er" comes from an Old English agent suffix, while the verb "clog" is far older in English than the sense of hindering or blocking. Clog originally meant a block of wood or a heavy weight attached to an animal's leg to hamper its movement, so to clog was first to fetter or encumber, and only later to obstruct. The "-er" ending has a longer journey. It descends from Latin "-arius", which passed through Old French "-ier" into Middle English as "-er", and it was reinforced by native English forms that had long been used to name people by their trade or activity. That gives "clogger" its sense of a person or thing doing the action, and it is the same machinery behind words like "baker" and "singer".

Synonyms: clog maker