under-spur-leather

English

Etymology

From under- +‎ spur-leather.

Pronunciation

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Noun

under-spur-leather (plural under-spur-leathers)

1. (obsolete) Subordinate, underling.
   • 1704, Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the Regulation of the Press‎^[1], London, page 5:

     […] if the Officers are allow’d to impose upon them, Under-Spur-leathers are always the Tyrants; a Government regulated by Laws, and Govern’d according to such Regulations, never willingly put it into the power of any Inferiour Officer to Tyrannize over his fellow Subjects.

   • 1711, Jonathan Swift, Letter to Esther Johnson dated 9 October, 1711, in Letters Written by the Late Jonathan Swift, London: C. Bathurst et al., 3rd edition, 1769, p. 61,^[2]

     I have instructed an under-spur-leather to write so, that it is taken for mine.

   • 1816, Walter Scott, The Black Dwarf in Tales of my Landlord, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Volume 1, Chapter 12, p. 242,^[3]

     […] I have opened house, not only for the gentry, but for the under-spur-leathers whom we must necessarily employ.