chaffern

English

Etymology

A modification of chafer (“vessel for heating water”) after words like cistern and lantern.

Noun

chaffern (plural chafferns)

1. (obsolete) A vessel for heating water.
   • 1780, Donald Monro, Observations on the Means of Preserving the Health of Soldiers, page 102:

     The wards should be daily fumigated by means of thus, benzoin, or other aromatics, or wetted gunpowder thrown on burning coals, put in an irot pot or chaffern, or with the steams of warm vinegar placed in the middle of the ward.

   • 1832, William Woodville, Medical Botany, page 114:

     A glass globe is then to be inverted over the mouth of the matrass, and the heat of a charcoal-chaffern being applied, iodine will sublime in great abundance.

   • 1888 April 16, H. Valentine Knaggs, “Sulphur in Diphtheria and As a Germ-Destroyer In Disease”, in The Therapeutic Gazette, volume 12, number 4, page 229:

     His method of employing the fumigations for sheds or byres containing livestock merely consisted in filling a chaffern two-thirds full of red-hot cinders and in inserting among them a crucible in which a sufficient quantity of roll brimstone was placed.

   • 1890 January 25, A. S. Green, “The Wealth of England Under the Tudors”, in The Speaker, volume 1, page 88:

     The houses, too, were rich with treasures gatherd from far and wide— brass pots and chafferns from France, gold work from Venice and Genoa , habergeons from Milan , ewers of blue glass powdered with gold, alabaster pots painted and gilded, "cushions of god embroidered with ramping lions of silver," and coverings of cloth of gold.

Related terms

• chauffeur