_Haberdasher_ (Vol. ii., pp. 167. 253.).--In Todd's edition of Johnson's
_Dictionary_, the word _haberdasher_ is derived from _berdash_, which is
said "to have been a name formerly used in England for a certain kind of
neck-dress, whence the maker or seller of such clothes was called a
_berdasher_; and thence comes _haberdashers_." This etymology is hardly
admissible. Can an early reference be given to the use of the term
_berdash_, as an article of dress? Minsheu, Todd remarks, ingeniously
deduces it from _Habt ihr dass_, German, _Have you this?_ the expression
of a shopkeeper offering his wares to sell. But the derivation of the
term _haberdasher_ furnished by your correspondent (Vol. ii., p. 253.)
is certainly the most satisfactory.
At the end of the sixteenth century (about 1580) the shopkeepers that
went under this designation dealt largely in most of the minor articles
of foreign manufacture; and among the "haberdashery" of that period were
"daggers, swords owches, broaches, aiglets, Spanish girdles, French
cloths, Milan caps, glasses, painted cruizes, dials, tables, cards,
balls, puppets, ink-horns, tooth-picks, fine earthen pots, pins and
points, hawks' bells, salt-cellars, spoons, knives, and tin dishes." A
yet more curious list of goods vended by the "milloners or haberdashers"
who dwelt at the Royal Exchange within two or three years after it had
been built, occurs in Stow's _Annals_ by Howe (p. 869.), where we are
informed that they "sould mouse-trappes, bird-cages, shooing-hornes,
lanthornes, and Jew's trumpes."
The author of that curious tract, _Maroccus Extaticus_, 1595 (which I
reprinted in the Percy Society) speaks of a "felow" loading his sleeve
with "fuel from the _haberdashers_."
The more ancient name of these traders was _milainers_, an appellation
derived from their dealing in merchandize chiefly imported from the city
of Milan. They were also, I believe, called _hurrers_, from dealing in
hats and caps.
It is evident, from the above, that "a retailer of goods, a dealer in
small wares," is the true meaning of the word _haberdasher_.