Soutere

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic term for a craftsman who makes, mends, or repairs shoes and boots
2. An old word for a person whose trade is making or fixing footwear
3. A historical name for a cobbler, one who cuts, sews, and repairs leather shoes

Etymology: Middle English "souter" meant a shoemaker or mender of shoes, and it comes from Latin "sutor," a cobbler, from "suere," to sew. The Latin root is the same one behind "suture," the stitching of a wound, so a souter was literally a sewer of leather. The word has a famous afterlife in Scotland. Its variant "soutar" survived in Scots for centuries, and the poet Robert Burns used it in his work, which kept it alive in Scottish usage long after it faded from standard English. Surnames such as Souter and Sowter preserve the trade in the same way, recording ancestors who once made their living stitching shoes.

Synonyms: cobbler, shoemaker, bootmaker