Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who calks; especially, one whose occupation is the calking of ships.
  • noun Same as calk.
  • noun One who calculates nativities.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who calks.
  • noun A calk on a shoe. See Calk, n., 1.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who calks.
  • noun A calk on a shoe.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

calk +‎ -er

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Examples

  • It was imparted to me by a calker, who owned a woolly French poodle, which remarkable animal, he informed me, used to swim out regularly once a week, -- on

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859 Various

  • In the fort it was decided to leave about forty men "with a provision of bread and wine for more than a year, seed for planting, the long boat of the ship, a calker, a carpenter, a gunner, and many other persons who have earnestly desired to serve your Highnesses and oblige me by remaining here and searching for the gold mine."

    Christopher Columbus Mildred Stapley Byne

  • Learning that my trade was that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place for me was in New Bedford, Mass.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue Various

  • While before the law of the State he was the equal of any other man, caste prejudice prevented him from finding work at his trade of calker; and he therefore sought employment as a laborer.

    Frederick Douglass 1932

  • Douglass's new friends advised him to go to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where whaling fleets were fitted out, and where he might hope to find work at his trade of ship-calker.

    Frederick Douglass 1932

  • Was sent to Baltimore to learn the ship-calker's trade.

    Frederick Douglass 1932

  • Others were there, not of the church; Kibby Baker, the atheist, who had heard the news through the church window where he peeped at the worshipers; Miah White's brother, the ship-calker, summoned by his sister; a score of others, herding down the dark wind.

    The Best Short Stories of 1917 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Various 1915

  • Hugh Auld easily succeeded in getting young Douglass apprenticed to a calker, in the extensive ship-yards of William Gardiner, on Fell's Point.

    Frederick Douglass 1906

  • Page 66 back to common labour, at which he could earn less than one-half of what he could have made as a calker.

    Frederick Douglass 1906

  • Auld, Hugh, apprentices Douglass to a ship-calker, 51; sells Douglass his own time, 55; sells Douglass into freedom, 113.

    Frederick Douglass 1906

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