🧶 Wool sorter 💼 Wool dealer

wool stapler

9.9

A person who sorts wool by quality, length and fineness

noun
/wʊl ˈsteɪplər/

: clasificador de lana

The wool stapler carefully examined each fleece before placing it into the appropriate bin.

Examples

A skilled wool stapler can greatly influence the value of a wool crop.
After years as a farmer, he found work as a wool stapler at the mill.
The wool stapler carefully sorted the fibers by quality.
Many wool staplers work in the textile industry.
The wool stapler carefully examined each fleece to sort it by quality and length.
After years as a farmer, he became a skilled wool stapler at the local mill.
Many wool staplers play a crucial role in ensuring that only the best fibers reach the market.

Synonyms

woolsorter

vswool stapler

9.8

A person who separates wool by quality for making yarn

is more specific sorting by quality plus length and fineness

Surface Forms

wool stapler singular

wool staplers plural

Morphology

wool + stapler

The element 'wool' is fully transparent, but 'stapler' is ambiguous or unfamiliar to many learners (they may think of an office stapler or merely the agentive -er). A B1 learner could infer 'someone associated with wool' from the agentive morphology, but the precise occupational sense 'dealer in raw wool' is not reliably predictable from the parts, so the expression is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Wool stapler probably comes from the old idea of making 'staples', small piles of wool sorted by quality. Imagine a person feeling each fleece and moving it into the fine, medium, or coarse pile, and you can see why a wool stapler means 'a person who sorts wool into different grades'.