Ye Olde Professions Quiz

what about "apothecarist" - I've heard that in addition to apothecary.

great quiz

With bones.

very fun!

An old professions quiz that doesn't even include the oldest profession of them all? Pfft.

Isn't Apothecary the place where you buy medicine and not a profession?

I also agree that Minstrel should be accepted.

Bonanza

i thought monger should work

"Monger" is usually a suffix, as in "fishmonger" or "ironmonger".

cheesemonger

Blessed are the cheese makers

No such thing as steel in Mediaeval times.

No thatcher or fletcher?

it's a shame i know

And more likely to be in UK as we don't use the term teamster.

What, no milliner? and what about haberdasher for the clothing maker?

wrangler also works for horse tender

Fun quiz thanks. Could you accept ostler as someone who looks after horses?

Thank you as that is what I immediately came up with.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ostler

Loved this quiz! Thanks so much!

i have to disagree about prostitute being brought up as the oldest profession. A prostitute accepts pay for performing sexual services. While I'm sure that a caveman offering a haunch of dead something helped his chances with a cavewoman this isn't true payment or even a profession. Prostitution as it is commonly know couldn't have exited until humanity moved past the hunter-gatherer stage and started to become more agricultural. You would need a large community of people with a fair amount of surplus before services like prostitution could become a way to fully support oneself and therefore become a profession. I'd say that hunter-gatherer is realistically the oldest profession. Wow, I put way too much thought into this :)

No, he just drives it.

In the UK and Australia, midwives can be male.

Yup. The word 'midwife' is derived from the Old English for 'with woman.' The word itself isn't gendered.

Most professions were male in medieval times, and you don't feel the need to append "(male)" to them all. The word "midwife" has absolutely no meaning of being male or female, as a matter of fact, so it is incorrect to state "(female)" above. In fact it is a bit offensive that a predominantly female profession should be marked as an oddity, while a predominantly male profession raises no eyebrows.

Absolutely many still exist, and I think people who work in these professions would be insulted to hear their skills referred to as being from the Middle Ages.

A furrier doesn't make fur. Biological processes in animals do

Definitely, there was no such profession

Superb quiz! All jobs still available in India!

Butcher baker & candlestick maker?

Plus, a candlestick isn't the same thing as a candle....

agreed

Great Quiz!

Stable master (or stablemaster) should also qualify as someone who cares for horses. I believe it falls under "ye olde profession" as well.

A farrier and a furrier would go nice back to back.

And ferrier (another word for blacksmith)!

"Ye" pronunciation and definition in this context should be required for 5/5 points.

? Not sure where it appears in the quiz, but the meaning is "the" and the pronunciation is "the", exactly as we say "the" in current English. The thorn or Y shape was the symbol for the sound we make for 'th' in the.

Doula?

When I initially read the clue on "Milks cows (female)" I thought, "Cf course female cows! Good lord, what a truly awful job it would be to 'milk' male cows!"

A midwife does not have to be female. The wife part refers to the client, not the professional.

makes wagons = coachbuilder,

drives a team of animals = herdsman

manages household servants = governess

A governess was hired to teach children, usually a she, and governed the children's education. They did not govern or manage the household servants.

My Mum's heating system struck a leak and it was discovered, during its replacement, that the pipes supplying her home were still lead! Eeek so the street was also dug up to replace those. This was in 2019. Plumbers are still finding lead to work with.

Maybe add a note to the description that the professions *began* in the middle-ages. I was expected to guess older, now-gone professions, but a bunch of these still exist.

Given that a baker will only earn money if he makes and sells bread, and a cooper will only make money if he makes and sells barrels, should alchemist (as it is described here) be considered an actual profession?

The problem is in the title, 'You Old Professions' doesn't make sense. The 'Y' in the 'ye' should be the Runic Thorne if you want to make the /th/ sound. Just saying....

The title is fine. The symbol for the letter "thorn", which looked much like a "p" with an extended top, was rendered as "y" by early printers. This pretty much sealed thorn's fate of eventually becoming an archaic letter.

How about "currier" as well as "tanner"? It''s more specifically a maker of leather.

The only ones I know are the ones that are also villager professions in Minecraft LOL