110 Fun Facts About Career

What does a farrier do?

Trims horses' hooves and fits horseshoes: the farrier's name comes from the Latin ferrum, iron, because shoeing horses was once a blacksmith's job.

What does a cooper make?

Wooden barrels and casks: a cooper's workshop is called a cooperage, and the trade gave English the surname Cooper.

What did a fletcher traditionally do?

Attach feathers to arrows: fletcher comes from the Old French fleche, arrow, and the trade survives in the surname Fletcher.

By British tradition a cordwainer made new shoes, while which tradesman was only allowed to repair them?

A cobbler was restricted to mending, and often barred by law from making shoes, while the cordwainer, named for the fine leather of Cordoba in Spain, worked only in new leather.

The wright in wheelwright, shipwright and playwright comes from an Old English word meaning what?

Worker: wright comes from the Old English wryhta, a worker or maker, which is why a playwright is spelled like a wheelwright and not like a writer.

A milliner makes and sells what?

Hats: milliner probably began as Milaner, a merchant from Milan, the Italian city famed for its bonnets, ribbons and other finery.

A chandler in a medieval household was responsible for what?

Wax and candles: a chandler ran a great household's lighting, and the word later widened to dealers in provisions, hence the ship's chandler who supplies boats.

In British English, what does a haberdasher sell?

Buttons, ribbons, zips and sewing supplies fill a British haberdasher's shelves, but in America the word came to mean a men's outfitter, like the Kansas City shop Harry Truman ran before politics.

A luthier builds or repairs what?

String instruments: luthier comes from luth, the French for lute, and the word spread from lute makers to the builders of violins and guitars.

What is a perfumer sometimes affectionately called?

A nose, or nez in French, is the perfume trade's nickname for a perfumer, earned by the finely trained sense of smell that composing a fragrance demands.

An actuary is a professional who does what?

Measures and manages risk using mathematics: an actuary prices the insurance and pensions that pay out years ahead, though the word once meant only a clerk who kept records.

What is a horologist interested in?

Clocks, watches and timekeeping: horology comes from the Greek hora, hour, a root it shares with horoscope, literally a watcher of the hour of birth.

What is a lexicographer's job?

Compiling dictionaries: in his own English dictionary Samuel Johnson defined a lexicographer as 'a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge'.

Which field is the study of insects, and is often confused with the study of word origins?

Entomology comes from the Greek entomon, insect, literally 'cut in pieces', Aristotle's name for creatures with segmented bodies; etymology is the one about word origins.

What does an ornithologist study?

Birds: ornithology leans on amateurs, as in Audubon's Christmas Bird Count, begun in 1900 when an ornithologist proposed counting birds on Christmas Day instead of shooting them.

A cartographer makes what?

Maps: cartography goes back to the Latin charta, a sheet of paper, the same root that gives English the chart and, less obviously, the playing card.

A seismologist studies what?

Earthquakes: seismology comes from the Greek seismos, a shaking, and its worldwide stations also listen for secret underground nuclear tests.

A meteorologist studies what?

The atmosphere and the weather: to the Greeks a meteoron was any thing high in the air, so rain, wind and rainbows all counted as meteors before the word narrowed to shooting stars.

What does an epidemiologist study?

Patterns and causes of disease in populations: the classic case is John Snow tracing an 1854 London cholera outbreak to one Broad Street water pump, whose handle was then removed.

What does a phlebotomist do?

Draws blood from veins: phlebotomy joins the Greek for vein and cutting, and for centuries it meant bloodletting as a cure rather than taking samples for tests.

A podiatrist specializes in which part of the body?

The foot, ankle and lower limb: podiatry joins the Greek for foot and physician, a newer name for what was long called chiropody, a word that mixes hand and foot.

Which eye-care professional is a medical doctor who can perform surgery?

An ophthalmologist went to medical school, which is why eye surgery falls to them; an optometrist tests sight and prescribes lenses, and an optician only fits them.

An audiologist treats disorders of what?

Hearing and balance: the organs of both sit together in the inner ear, which is why the audiologist who tests hearing also investigates dizziness.

A dermatologist is a doctor of what?

The skin: derma is Greek for skin, and because hair and nails grow out of it, the dermatologist is their doctor too.

Geriatrics is the medical care of whom?

Older adults: geriatrics was built in the 1900s from Greek roots for old age and healer, on the model of pediatrics, the medicine of life's other end.

What does an oncologist treat?

Cancer: oncology comes from onkos, a Greek word for a tumour, while cancer itself is the Latin for crab, an animal that Greek physicians thought some tumours resembled.

Which surgical specialty covers the bladder, the kidneys and the male reproductive organs?

Urology operates on the urinary tract, kidneys included, while nephrology, named from the Greek nephros, kidney, treats kidney disease with medicine rather than the knife.

An anesthesiologist is responsible for what?

A patient's care before, during and after surgery is the anesthesiologist's job, and the name fits: anesthesia is Greek for 'without feeling', a word medicine took up when ether surgery arrived in 1846.

In North America, what is a new doctor's supervised hospital training after medical school called?

Residency: the name is literal, because nineteenth-century trainee doctors resided in the hospital's own dormitories while they worked.

"First, do no harm" is often attributed to which medical text, though it does not appear there?

The Hippocratic Oath only promises to abstain from doing harm; the famous wording came later, and its closest ancient match sits in another Hippocratic work, Of the Epidemics.

What exam must a law graduate pass to practice as a lawyer in a US state?

The bar examination takes its name from a wooden railing, the bar that marked off the part of a hall or courtroom reserved for qualified lawyers.

In a US law firm, who researches cases and drafts documents but may not advise clients or argue in court?

A paralegal works under a lawyer who stays responsible for the result, because only licensed attorneys may give advice or appear in court; para- is Greek for beside, as in paramedic.

In the United States, what does a notary public chiefly verify before stamping a document?

The signer's identity is what an American notary vouches for, not the document's contents, whereas notaries in civil-law countries are trained lawyers who draft the deeds themselves.

Which keyboard machine lets court reporters take down speech at more than 200 words a minute?

A stenotype has far fewer keys than a typewriter, and the reporter presses several at once, like a piano chord, so that one stroke writes a whole syllable or word.

What is a sous chef?

The second-in-command of a kitchen: sous is French for under, and the rank sits in the brigade system that Auguste Escoffier modelled on the military chain of command.

In a classic French kitchen brigade, which cook runs the cold station?

The garde manger, roughly 'food keeper', is named after the cool pantry where food was stored, which became the station for cold dishes.

What is a sommelier?

A restaurant's wine expert: sommelier goes back to an old French word for baggage, and the first sommeliers were court officials in charge of a household's supplies, moved by pack animal.

What does the word barista literally mean in Italian?

Bartender: an Italian barista serves alcohol and snacks as well as espresso, and the word is said to rest on the English bar, borrowed into Italian and later handed back with the coffee.

Who is the gaffer on a film set?

The chief lighting technician: one explanation is that film crews borrowed gaffer, old British slang for a foreman or boss, which itself seems to be a worn-down form of godfather.

In movie credits, what is a best boy?

The assistant to the gaffer or key grip: each of those two department heads has a best boy, who acts as the crew's foreman and keeps track of its hired equipment.

What are Foley artists responsible for?

Recreating everyday sound effects in post-production: the craft is named after Jack Foley, who performed footsteps and door slams live in time with the picture when films first got sound.

Which crew member is also called the director of photography?

The cinematographer: the title is built from the Greek for 'movement' and 'to write', and on set this is the person who works with the director on how the shots are framed and photographed.

An arborist looks after what?

Individual trees and shrubs: arbor is Latin for tree, and where a forester manages whole woodlands for their timber, an arborist looks after the health and safety of one tree at a time.

What is a vintner?

A winemaker, at least in American usage: vintner goes back to the Latin vinum, wine, and for centuries it meant the merchant who sold the stuff rather than its maker.

The word plumber comes from the Latin name of which metal, once used for water pipes?

Lead: plumbum in Latin, the metal the Romans used for their pipes, which is also why its chemical symbol is Pb.

What is a taxidermist's job?

Preserving and mounting animal bodies for display: the name is Greek for 'arranging the hide', and the craft's usual aim is to pose that hide so the animal looks alive.

A glazier is a tradesperson who works mainly with what material?

Glass: a glazier is literally a 'glasser', from an old verb meaning to fit with glass, the same root that gives windows their double glazing.

What does a steeplejack do?

Climbs tall structures to repair and maintain them: jack is the old everyman name for a working man, as in lumberjack, so a steeplejack is the man who goes up the spire or chimney.

Which casino job title first meant someone riding behind another on a horse's rump?

The croupier comes from croupe, French for a horse's rump: the word went from a pillion rider to the backer who stood behind a gambler with spare cash, and only then to the dealer.

Members of which hotel profession's elite society, Les Clefs d'Or, wear crossed golden keys on their lapels?

Concierges: Les Clefs d'Or is French for 'the golden keys', and the pins are earned, since candidates need at least five years in hotel service before they can join.

A sexton is an officer of a church charged with looking after what?

Its buildings and cemetery: the job long included digging the graves, which is why the gravedigger in Hamlet says he has been sexton there, man and boy, for thirty years.

On a ship, which crew works under the boatswain, also spelled bosun?

The deck hands: boatswain joins boat to the Old Norse sveinn, a boy or servant, and sailors wore the word down to bosun, the officer whose whistle called the crew to their duties.

What was a ship's purser principally responsible for?

Handling money on board: a purser is literally the keeper of the purse, and the title has since taken to the air, where the head of an airliner's cabin crew is called the purser.

Which studio device takes its name from a theatre job?

The teleprompter began as an American brand name, joining tele- to the theatre prompter, whose job is feeding actors forgotten lines; an actor proposed it because television left so little time to memorise scripts.

By what less common name is a beekeeper also known?

Apiculturist comes from apis, the Latin for bee, which also gives the apiary; the look-alike viticulturist tends grapevines and the sericulturist raises silkworms.

In the Scottish Highlands, what is a ghillie?

An attendant on a fishing or hunting expedition, the ghillie began as a Highland chief's manservant, and some ghillies even carried their chiefs across rivers to keep them dry.

A cruciverbalist is skilled at creating or solving what?

Crossword puzzles: the name joins the Latin for 'cross' and 'word'. The first modern one ran in the New York World in December 1913, and within a decade most major American newspapers carried one.

Which official's title comes from the Latin for 'crown', after early holders who guarded royal revenues?

Coroner: from 1194 each English county elected 'keepers of the pleas of the Crown', and only centuries later did the job narrow to explaining deaths that were not obviously natural.

What did a knocker-upper do for a living in industrial Britain?

Woke sleepers by tapping their windows: knocker-uppers used long poles, and one east London woman a pea-shooter, until affordable alarm clocks killed the trade off.

In old England, who opened with the call 'Oyez, oyez, oyez'?

The town crier: 'oyez' is Anglo-French for 'hear ye', called three times to win silence, and court officers use the same cry to open proceedings.

While developing special relativity, Albert Einstein earned his living in Bern examining what?

Patent applications crossed Einstein's desk for seven years, including ideas for a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter, and he was working there when he published his landmark 1905 physics.

Which trade did Harrison Ford teach himself to support his family before Star Wars made him a star?

Carpentry kept Harrison Ford afloat when the acting roles on offer disappointed him, and he later said he had spent 15 years moving between building jobs and film sets.

Before electronic machines took over, which job title did NASA give the staff who did its sums by hand?

Computers were people long before they were machines: the women who held the title at NASA, celebrated in Hidden Figures, worked on Friendship 7, the first American crewed mission into orbit.

Which city's taxi drivers must pass The Knowledge, a memory test of its streets and landmarks?

London cabbies who pass The Knowledge can join the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers, and the newly qualified are nicknamed butter boys.

Which job in industrial Britain existed to rouse workers for their shifts before alarms were reliable?

Knocker-up was a paid trade: they rapped on doors with a baton, reached upstairs windows with a long bamboo stick, and a few fired dried peas at the pane.

The word 'salary' comes from the Latin salarium, built on the Roman word for which seasoning?

Salt gave the Latin salarium its name, but the popular story that Roman soldiers were paid in it has no ancient evidence behind it.

In medieval Europe, which tradespeople also pulled teeth and amputated limbs alongside their everyday work?

Barbers had the razors and the steady hands, so for centuries they also bled the sick, and the stripes of the barber's pole are said to stand for the blood and the bandages.

Which US state's midcentury custom spread via California to become the office ritual of Casual Friday?

Hawaii's Aloha Friday came first, and on the islands Aloha wear is accepted as proper business dress on any working day.

Which future U.S. president left the Navy's submarine service to take over his family's peanut farm?

Jimmy Carter gave up a promising naval career when his father died, then spent years expanding the family peanut business before entering Georgia politics.

Which fictional factory worker, first named in a 1942 song, became a symbol of American women's war work?

Rosie the Riveter began as a 1942 song, and the muscle-flexing poster now linked with her is often mistaken for part of that campaign.

Which country star wrote the title song for the 1980 office comedy 9 to 5 and also acted in it?

Dolly Parton's song and the film both took their name from 9to5, a group founded in 1973 to win fair pay and equal treatment for women at work.

Which career networking site did Microsoft buy in 2016 for about 26 billion dollars?

LinkedIn was the biggest purchase Microsoft had ever made, a record that stood until the company bought the game maker Activision Blizzard.

Which job does Superman hold at the Daily Planet in his everyday guise as mild-mannered Clark Kent?

Journalist was the job co-creator Jerry Siegel imagined for himself after leaving school, so he gave it to Clark Kent, whose timid act hides the hero.

Which US state first made Labor Day an official holiday, seven years before the federal government did?

Oregon acted in 1887, and by the time Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 thirty states were already celebrating it.

Which kind of scientist is Alan Grant, the dinosaur fossil hunter at the heart of Jurassic Park?

Paleontologist Alan Grant is invited to the island alongside Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist, whose speciality is fossil plants rather than dinosaur bones.

Which job title, debated and adopted at NASA in 1959, comes from Greek words meaning star sailor?

Astronaut won out at NASA even though the deputy chief, Hugh Dryden, argued for cosmonaut because crews would roam the wider cosmos rather than fly to the stars.

Which job does Squidward Tentacles do at the Krusty Krab, where SpongeBob SquarePants works the grill?

Cashier Squidward is SpongeBob's ill-tempered, snobbish neighbour as well as his workmate, so the octopus can never get away from the cheerful fry cook.

Which collar colour describes manual workers, after the sturdy shirts worn as part of their uniforms?

Blue denim and chambray were the standard shirts of manual labourers, a contrast with the white dress shirts of office staff that gave desk jobs their own collar colour.

Which Latin phrase, cut to two letters by people applying for jobs, translates loosely as 'course of life'?

Curriculum vitae is usually cut to CV, and it was once spelled in English with the joined letter æ at the end of its second word.

Which job does Mary Poppins take with the Banks family after descending from the clouds in Disney's film?

Nanny is the job the Banks children advertise themselves, asking for someone kind and sympathetic after their strict father demands a stern, no-nonsense one.

Volcanologists take their job title from Vulcan, the Roman god of what?

Fire was Vulcan's domain, and the scientists named after him often travel to active volcanoes to watch them erupt and to collect ash, rock and lava samples.

In an email header, what do the letters cc stand for, a holdover from the age of the typewriter?

Carbon copy once meant a duplicate typed through a coated sheet, and business letters used cc to list everyone who had been sent one.

Which 3M office product grew from a weak glue that chemist Spencer Silver made by accident in 1968?

Post-it Notes took years to arrive: Spencer Silver had been trying to make a super-strong adhesive, and then spent years failing to interest 3M in his weak one.

Which job does Homer Simpson hold in Sector 7-G of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant?

Safety inspector is Homer's steady job, though he held more than 188 others across the first 400 episodes of The Simpsons, most of them for a single episode.

Which working pattern did carmaker Henry Ford announce for his factories in 1926, as one of its pioneers?

A five-day week of eight-hour shifts gave Ford's staff 40 hours, down from the 48 hours he had settled on four years earlier.

Which word for giving jobs to relatives comes from the Italian for nephew, thanks to the habits of popes?

Nepotism dates from popes and bishops who, bound by vows of celibacy, handed plum positions to their nephews as other men would to their sons.

Which word for a self-employed worker is credited to Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, where it meant a mercenary?

Freelancer comes from a knight whose lance was sworn to no lord, so he could fight for whoever paid; the figurative sense arrived in the 1860s.

In medieval craft guilds, which rank between apprentice and master was named for being paid by the day?

Journeyman comes from the French journée, a whole day, because these qualified craftsmen had earned the right to charge a fee for each day's labour.

The surname Smith, the most common in Britain and the United States, first described which trade?

Metalworking is the root of it: the Old English word meant one who works in metal, and it is related to smite, an old verb for hitting.

In Tudor England, which job did a gong farmer do, permitted by law only during the night?

Emptying cesspits and privies was thought so foul that gong farmers could work only after dark, which earned them the nickname nightmen.

Which nickname was given to the boys who ferried charges from the magazine to the guns on sailing warships?

Powder monkeys kept the gunpowder moving in battle, and many were poor boys recruited through the Marine Society because their parents could not afford to raise them.

Which idea from a 1969 management book says employees rise until they reach a job they cannot do?

The Peter principle was set out by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull, who argued that the skills which earn a promotion often fail to carry over to the new role.

The workplace sense of which word is often traced to 1768, when protesting sailors took down ships' sails?

Strike in this sense is often linked to sailors who struck, or lowered, the topgallant sails of merchant ships in port, though the word may also echo the downing of tools.

Which name for people who resist new technology comes from English textile workers who wrecked machinery?

Luddites were not simply afraid of machines: the 19th-century movement objected to what automation did to pay, child labour, working conditions and the quality of the cloth.

Which word for an insider who exposes wrongdoing at work is activist Ralph Nader said to have coined?

Whistleblower was meant as a kinder label than informer or snitch, although reporters had already used the word in the 1960s for people such as Nader himself.

How do smokejumpers, the firefighters sent to tackle remote wildfires early on, reach the flames?

By parachute, and their food, water and tools follow them down the same way, leaving a crew self-sufficient on the ground for 48 hours.

Which job, along with janitor, did the future Pope Francis hold as a young man before training as a priest?

Bouncer and janitor were among his early jobs, and he also spent several years in the food section of a laboratory, having trained as a chemical technician.

In the courts of England and Wales, which advocates traditionally wear a short, curled horsehair wig?

Barristers chose to keep the wig: after a 2008 survey of the profession, the Bar recommended retaining formal robes and wigs in civil as well as criminal cases.

In Cuban cigar factories, what was the lector hired to do while the other workers rolled tobacco?

Workers clubbed together to pay a colleague who would read aloud to them from books and newspapers, a practice that began in Cuba in 1865 to relieve boredom.

The surname Walker recalls which medieval cloth trade, in which woven wool was pounded with the feet?

Fulling cleaned and shrank newly woven cloth, and the trade left English with three surnames in all: Fuller, Tucker and Walker.

Which New York garment factory's 1911 fire, deadly because exits were locked, led to new workplace laws?

Triangle Shirtwaist cost 146 garment workers their lives, most of them women and girls, and the outcry brought tougher factory laws and a surge in union membership.

Which trade did future president Andrew Johnson learn as a boy apprentice and practise in frontier towns?

Tailoring took Andrew Johnson, once a runaway apprentice with a reward on his head, to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he became alderman, mayor and then a state legislator.

Who became the first woman in a U.S. cabinet when Franklin Roosevelt made her Secretary of Labor in 1933?

Frances Perkins stayed until 1945, the longest anyone has held that office, and was also the first woman to enter the presidential line of succession.

Which American efficiency pioneer is most remembered for timing factory tasks with a stopwatch?

Frederick Taylor called his approach scientific management, and his book on it was later voted the most influential management title of the twentieth century.

Which country passed the first national minimum wage law in 1894, a year after giving women the vote?

New Zealand led the way by recognising unions, which then set wage floors for their members; Victoria in Australia followed in 1896 and the United Kingdom only in 1909.

Which term is Margaret Hamilton credited with coining while she led the team behind the Apollo missions' onboard code?

Software engineering was her way of setting code beside hardware as a true branch of the discipline, at a time when programmers simply learned on the job.

Which airline job did nurse Ellen Church pioneer in 1930 after being refused work as a pilot?

Stewardess Ellen Church persuaded Boeing Air Transport that nurses on board would make flying safer and reassure wary passengers, and the first crew took off in May 1930.

Which piece of office furniture began as Herman Miller's Action Office II, designed by Robert Propst in the 1960s?

The cubicle was meant as an improvement: it gave staff more privacy and room for personal touches than the rows of desks in one open room that came before.

Which trade did Lech Wałęsa practise at the Gdańsk shipyard before he led Solidarity and then Poland?

Electrician Wałęsa first worked as a car mechanic, and his union activism at the shipyard got him put under surveillance, fired in 1976 and arrested several times.

Which office product did typist Bette Nesmith Graham invent in 1956, before her son Michael joined the Monkees?

Correction fluid began as tempera paint that she mixed in a blender and gave to co-workers in small bottles labelled Mistake Out.