cocksfootern.
/ˈkɒksˌfʊtə/, U.S. /ˈkɑksˌfʊdər/, New Zealand English /ˈkɒksˌfʊdə/ New Zealand. Now historical.
A person who gathers cocksfoot seed for sale. Cf. grass seeder n. 2.
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the world > food and drink > farming > cultivation or tillage > cultivation of plants or crops > picking or gathering > [noun] > picker or gatherer other things
mosser1880
cherry-picker1890
cocksfooter1891
1891 Press (Christchurch, N.Z.) 16 Jan. 2/4 What grievous pains have we committed more than those cocksfooters on the Peninsula.
1903 N.Z. Illustr. Mag. Aug. 349/2 All parts of New Zealand send their quota of cocksfooters to ‘make a cheque’.
1990 S. Eldred-Grigg N.Z. Working People 1890–1990 ii. 32 As they heaved and sweated, the difference between the smallholder with his scrap of land, and the town labourer with his city backyard, was perhaps less important than their common fate as harvesters, threshers or cocksfooters.
2014 E. Pawson & A. A. Christensen in J. Frawley & I. McCalman Rethinking Invasion Ecologies v. 76 Until the demise of the grass seed industry in the 1930s, the work of maintaining a landscape of grass was undertaken by cocksfooters and dairy cattle.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2019; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1891