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English
Etymology
under- + spur-leather
Noun
under-spur-leather (plural under-spur-leathers)
- (obsolete) Subordinate, underling.
1704, Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the Regulation of the Press, London, page 5:[…] if the Officers are allow’d to impose upon them, Under-Spur-leathers are always the Tyrants; a Government regulated by Laws, and Govern’d according to such Regulations, never willingly put it into the power of any Inferiour Officer to Tyrannize over his fellow Subjects.
- 1711, Jonathan Swift, Letter to Esther Johnson dated 9 October, 1711, in Letters Written by the Late Jonathan Swift, London: C. Bathurst et al., 3rd edition, 1769, p. 61,
- I have instructed an under-spur-leather to write so, that it is taken for mine.
- 1816, Walter Scott, The Black Dwarf in Tales of my Landlord, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Volume 1, Chapter 12, p. 242,
- I have opened house, not only for the gentry, but for the under-spur-leathers whom we must necessarily employ.