🧼 To make bubbles 🧼 Soap bubbles 🐎 Sweaty foam 🥊 To beat hard 🏗️ A wall worker 🐎 To sweat foam

lather

1 9.9

A worker who fits thin wooden strips on walls before plastering

noun
/ˈlæðər/

Archaic

: colocador de listones (arcaico, coloquial)

Many skilled lathers are needed to complete the restoration of the old building's ceilings.

Examples

I'm talking about their obsession with Fast and Furious, the gun-walking operation in Arizona that Republicans have been in a lather about for the past two years.

Blog text (7)
He had teamsters, lathers, and bricklayers working under him.

Fiction book (1992)
I am not the one in a lather seeking to try this case before it has come to a judge.

Blog text (33)
Lots of lathers, as I recall.

Blog text (24)
In a room that might have served the lathers of the eighteenth century, I train the boys to shave a block of wood straight, smooth, and square.

Fiction book (1994)
He remembers snatches of Lather's description, which he skimmed earlier in the day at the airport, when Delia left the paperback lying on the seat next to his while the two women went off to the ladies' room.

Fiction book (1991)
The team of lathers worked diligently to prepare the walls for plastering.
In construction, experienced lathers are essential for ensuring the laths are properly installed.

Surface Forms

lather singular

lathers plural

Morphology

lather = lath (transparent) = lath + er

This is a regular agent noun formed from 'lath' + '-er', meaning a person who works with laths.

Etymology

The word lather for a tradesman comes from lath ('thin wooden strip'), so a lather is the worker who fits laths on walls before the plaster is put on.