Ebonists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A craftsman involved in the creation of items from ebony or similar dark hardwoods
2. a person who specializes in the art of making objects, often fine furniture, from specific types of wood
3. an artisan skilled in working with dense, dark wood to produce artistic and functional pieces

Etymology: "Ebonists" is the plural of "ebonist," a craftsman who works in ebony and other dark, dense woods. The base word, ebony, comes from the Greek "ebenos," which likely passed into Latin and then into the Romance languages before reaching English, where the wood's name was in use by the Middle English period. The suffix "-ist," borrowed from Greek through Latin and French, marks a person who practises or specialises in something, the same ending found in "pianist" or "florist." The pairing is a straightforward compound: the material plus the practitioner suffix. Ebonist is a fairly specialised term, most often used of furniture makers who worked in the 18th and 19th centuries with ebony veneers, and its plural simply counts several such craftspeople.