milliner

noun

1. (archaic)A person who sells (women's) apparel, accessories, and other decorative goods, especially those originally manufactured in Milan.

   “He hath ſongs for man, or vvoman, of all ſizes: No Milliner can ſo fit his cuſtomers vvith Gloues: […]”

   “Hoſt. Here comes my vvife and daughter. / […] / Clovv[n]. She is a pretty lure to dravv cuſtome to your ordinary. / Hoſt. Doſt think I keep her to that purpoſe? / Clovv. VVhen a Dove-houſe is empty, there is cumin-ſeed uſed to purloine from the reſt of the neighbours; […] A Milliner has choice of Monkies, and Paraketoes; […]”

   “[H]e vvill not vviſh to get out of that narrovv, that exceeding narrovv Circle; and, in my Opinion, ſhould keep no Company, but that of Tailors, VVigpuffers, and Milaners.”

2. (specifically)A person involved in the design, manufacture, or sale of hats for women.

   “The Milliner muſt be thoroughly verſed in Phyſiognomy; in the Choice of Ribbons ſhe muſt have a particular regard to the Complexion, and muſt ever be mindful to cut the Head-dreſs to the Dimentions of the Face.”

   “The great difficulty generally experienced by amateur milliners in lining bonnets, is mainly attributable to the error of fixing the lining in the first instance to the edge of the bonnet, instead of arranging it previously at the head part.”

   “Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came down from London [to Tunbridge Wells], and opened a bazaar under the trees.”

   “She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town.”

   “We may, therefore, fairly suppose that the first milliner was probably contemporaneous with the first woman, and that the carpenters who made the ark were not ignorant of the construction of a bandbox.”

verb

1. (archaic, transitive)To manufacture (women's apparel, specifically hats); also, to supply (someone) with women's apparel, specifically hats.

   “We pass over his ridiculous observation […] that Sallust has been "man-millinered by Dr. [Henry] Steuart;" for on what we do not understand we can make no remarks.”

   “In the east, the only "study of mankind, is man." They have no Miss [Maria] Edgeworth, nor any of those millinering cutters-out of human nature into certain patterns of given rules in education.”

   “Oh, if I had but a decent little income, enough to make her tolerably comfortable! For you know she couldn't go on millinering if she was married to me. My mother wouldn't stand that.”

   “Their eyes were very busy—a millinering I should say. The lady in front of us had her book upside down; the two behind us got into a violent quarrel about somebody's bonnet, which one of the two said was new, while the other pretended it was an old one turned.”

   “You will find that my dressmaker, Madame Smith, is to be depended on for work, though she is expensive and dishonest. When we are tired of Wiltstoken, we will go to Paris, and be millinered there; but in the meantime we can resort to Madame Smith.”

2. (archaic, figuratively, transitive)To adorn or decorate (something).

   “We would not have Poesy to be greatly millinered, whatever fashions other ladies may adopt; and when we meet her corseted in the iron framework of the sonnet's rhymes, and crinolined about with the unyielding drapery of its fourteen lines, we feel that she is no doubt elegantly dressed, but we long to see her in any other attire she is wont to put on.”