Defined in the OED as: ‘small trees or shrubs, coppice wood or brush-wood growing beneath higher timber trees’, a term on record from the fourteenth century.
The verb ‘to dight’ was used frequently in connection with the preparation of wool, linen, leather, etc. and ‘undight’ was a reference to articles that had not been fully processed.
The vamp was that part of a boot which covered the front of the foot, from French avant pied, and the verb referred to cutting and shaping the leather used in making or repairing it.
The profitable working of a coal-pit depended on how well it was drained and ventilated, and various methods of allowing fresh air to circulate in the workings were tried. These usually involved driving special heads, additional shafts or holing existing walls but the records are seldom very explicit.
Basic acetate of copper which occurs naturally as a ‘rust’ on copper, or can be obtained artificially by the action of dilute acetic acid on the metal.
To view had the meaning of to inspect or survey, and the viewer was a person qualified to view or take a view in that sense. The word was in widespread use in all the craft guilds and in subsequent industrial and trade practices.
Now a wicker-work clothes basket but formerly a wooden or metal basket or tray used for removing or ‘voiding’ dirty dishes or food from the table after a meal.
This French word is found from 1359-60 in building accounts, mostly in connection with churches where it was used for the shaped vault stones of an arch. It must also have been used of arches in bridge building but is not recorded in that sense in the OED until 1739.