goldbeater

English

Etymology

From Middle English goldbeter, equivalent to gold +‎ beater.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -iːtə(ɹ)

Noun

goldbeater (plural goldbeaters)

1. A craftsman who creates gold leaf by hammering gold bars.
   • 2004, Paul Fattaruso, Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf, →ISBN, page 26:

     Zebedee went to the goldbeaters shop, which smelled like lamb because the goldbeater ate a sandwich of lamb every day for lunch.

   • 2015, Ed Regis, Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology, →ISBN:

     The membrane had been used, perhaps since antiquity, to make gold leaf, which goldbeaters produced by starting out with a small ingot of gold and beating it thinner, then sandwiching the leaves between sheets of cow intestines, ultimately creating a stack of alternating goldbeater's skins and gold leaf that could be more than 100 layers deep.

   • 2017, Laura Morelli, The Painter's Apprentice: A Novel of 16th-Century Venice, →ISBN:

     In my mind's eye, I see Cristiano on the day he first arrived in my father's workshop, the old goldbeater's assistant now grown into a man.

Derived terms

• goldbeater's skin