Kembster

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A woman who cleans or combs out wool archaic, historical

    "A married woman who supplemented her family's income by brewing ale or combing wool for yarn would not have been identified in the records as a brewster or kembster."

Example

More examples

"A married woman who supplemented her family's income by brewing ale or combing wool for yarn would not have been identified in the records as a brewster or kembster."

Etymology

From Middle English kembestere, kempstare, kemster, equivalent to kemb + -ster.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.