sweatern.

1684 W. Russell Physical Treat. 13 Seeing it is evident, that Vomiting and Purging Medicines never become Sweaters or Binders.

1856 ‘Stonehenge’ Man. Brit. Rural Sports ii. vii. ii. §2. 451/2 This is no doubt a strong sweater, but it upsets the stomach.

1712 R. Steele Spectator No. 332. ⁋2 These Sweaters..seem to have at present but a rude Kind of Discipline amongst them.

1878 W. E. H. Lecky Hist. Eng. 18th Cent. I. iii. 482 The ‘sweaters’ who formed a circle round their prisoner and pricked him with their swords till he sank exhausted to the ground.

1846 Manch. Guardian 21 Mar. 7/4 A sort of middlemen, called ‘sweaters’, who get it [sc. tailoring work] by men and women at starvation prices.

1850 C. Kingsley Alton Locke I. x. 147 Were not the army clothes, the post-office clothes, the policemen's clothes, furnished by contractors and sweaters, who hired the work at low prices, and let it out again to journeymen at still lower ones?

1869–70 R. G. Latham Dict. Eng. Lang. Sweater..Middlemen between slopsellers and working tailors. Colloquial.

1879 G. R. Sims Social Kaleidoscope 1st Ser. ix. 58 The half-starved women and men, who put the things together in top garrets in back slums, or are nigger-driven by a ‘sweater’ in an East-end workroom.

1890 Earl of Dunraven Draft Rep. Sweating Syst. §7 The sweater may employ only two or three persons, or he may have two or three score in his service; but the great bulk of the sweated class work for small masters and in rooms or shops where from two or three to a dozen or twenty are employed.

1845 Currency Theory Reviewed 69 It being obvious that the coinage, in the very nature of things, must be for ever, unit by unit, falling under depreciation by the mere action of ordinary and unavoidable abrasion—(to say nothing of the inducement which every restoration of the coinage holds out to the whole legion of ‘pluggers’ and ‘sweaters’).

1868 E. Seyd Bullion (1880) 550 To the sweater it really can make no difference whether the mint takes his lightened sovereigns.

1875 W. S. Jevons Money x. 115 No one now actually refuses any gold money in retail business; so that the sweater..has all the opportunities he can desire.

1851 H. Mayhew London Labour I. 126/2 The business is a sweater, sir; it's heavy work.

1856 H. B. Stowe Dred xlii You ought to read Fletcher's book; that book, sir, is a sweater, I can tell you. I sweat over it, I know.

1940 Movie Mirror June 9/1 (caption) Sweet and sophisticated sixteen: Lana Turner, at the time her face hit a thousand papers as the ‘Sweater Girl’.

1941 Life 14 Apr. 33/2 Mr. Breen's letter left movie~makers wondering..what to do with their up-and-coming sweater girls.

1956 S. Ertz Charmed Circle 71 Among all the ‘sweater girls’ she looked, in her unrevealing black dress, as if she had strayed in by mistake.

1971 D. MacKenzie Sleep is for Rich iii. 66 Crying Eddie was getting plenty of attention from the sweater girls.

1964 New Yorker 12 Oct. 15 Sweater-shirt of pink cashmere.

1977 Private Eye 4 Mar. 20/2 (advt.) American styled printed sweatershirts and T-shirts.

1901 S. E. White Claim Jumpers i. 11 Two sweatered and white-ducked individuals.

1915 P. G. Wodehouse Something Fresh i. § 1 Her bright blue eyes, fixed on his flannelled and sweatered person.

1946 R. Chandler Red Wind 210 The sweatered man snatched the gun up.

1971 C. McCullers Mortgaged Heart (1977) 74 His blue sweatered shoulders were shaking.