Quillman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who writes or composes using a quill pen
2. Someone who practices writing or authorship with a quill as their writing instrument
3. An author or scribe who employs a quill pen for their work

Etymology: Quillman is a plain compound: "quill" joined to "-man," the familiar English suffix for a person associated with something. The "quill" is the stiff feather of a bird's wing or tail, cut and hollowed to hold ink, which made it the standard writing instrument for centuries before the steel nib. A quillman, then, is a person who works with quills, the sense of someone defined by that pen. The word's lineage is therefore entirely English. Its first element goes back to a word for a feather shaft, and its second is the native suffix that English has long used to name people by their trade or association, as in "postman" or "huntsman." Nothing in the construction is borrowed from another language, so the word's meaning follows directly from its two parts.