cooper
/ˈkuːpə
/noun
A maker or repairer of casks and barrels.Mount Joy was a great industrial town, having blacksmiths, wagon builders, coopers, weavers, millers, molders, and toolmakers....
- It had two butchers, two coopers, two weavers, a shoemaker, blacksmith, a cornmill, a pound, a lime kiln and, of course, a pub.
- Dance themes deal with relations between men and women as well as particular occupations such as the dances of reapers, cobblers, coopers, and smiths.
verb [with object]
Make or repair (a cask or barrel): my father coopered casks and barrels for the ships [no object]: he worked most of his life coopering for a brewery...
- First comes the sherry casks, then there's the traditional bourbon casks from America, and finally it is moved to new oak casks, coopered from American timber.
- Richard worked just about every job in that business, from harvesting logs to make the barrel staves through to coopering and trucking the water-tight barrels to fishery clients in Atlantic Canada.
- His films include clay-pipe making, charcoal burning, clog-making, brush-making, coopering and tanning.
Origin
Middle English cowper, from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German kūper, from kūpe 'tub, vat', based on Latin cupa. Compare with coop.