Lasser

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who catches cattle or horses by throwing a looped rope called a lasso over them
2. A person who ropes livestock or other animals by casting a noose or lariat around them
3. The rider or herder who uses a lariat to snare an animal by looping the rope about it

Etymology: "Lasser" is a word that English took from German, where "Lässer" was a surname for a physician. In German, the name marked someone whose trade was bloodletting, the old medical practice of opening a vein to draw blood. The German noun comes from the verb "lassen," meaning "to let" or "to allow," and the surname describes a person who performed this procedure. In English the word keeps its specialized sense as a term for a practitioner of that same trade, so a lasser is someone who lets blood. Its appearance in English is a borrowing from German medical and occupational vocabulary rather than a word that developed through the usual Latin and French channels that shaped much of the language's medical terminology.