Clokkemakyer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A craftsman who builds, assembles, or mends mechanical clocks and timepieces, as the trade was known in Middle English
2. An artisan skilled in making and repairing clocks, an older term for what is now called a clockmaker
3. Someone whose trade is constructing timekeeping mechanisms such as clocks, a medieval English name for the clockmaker

Etymology: Clokkemakyer is a Middle English word for a maker of clocks, built from "clokke" (clock) and "makyer" (maker). Its own history is thin: it appears in the record only in the Middle English period, when mechanical clocks were still new in England and the craft was not yet fixed with a single settled name. The fuller word "clockmaker" later displaced it, so this form survives mainly as a historical curiosity. The first element comes from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German "clocke", meaning bell, and the sense shifted from the bell that rang the hours to the mechanism that did the ringing. The second element, "makyer", is the Middle English agent noun for one who makes, formed on the verb "maken", which goes back to Old English "macian". The pattern of a noun plus "-er" for a worker is the same one that gives us "baker" and "brewer."

Synonyms: clockmaker, watchmaker, horologist