meester, noun

/ˈmɪəstə(r)/
Forms:
Also meister, and with initial capital.
Origin:
DutchShow more Dutch meester master, or obsolete dialect meister schoolmaster, teacher, leader.
1.
a. In historical contexts. A resident tutor hired by rural families; an itinerant schoolmaster. Also with qualifying word, school-meester.
1798 Lady A. Barnard in Lord Lindsay Lives of Lindsays (1849) III. 439Here was another civil schoolmaster, the tutor of the yonge vrow...The good meister gave us some of his private bottle of punch.
1822 W.J. Burchell Trav. I. 199The daughters..were under the tuition of an itinerant tutor, or Meester, as he was called, who had been for several months an inmate of the family.
1824 W.J. Burchell Trav. II. 114This meester..(that is; schoolmeester, or schoolmaster) considered it part of his profession..to let every person know the extent of his acquirements.
1829 C. Rose Four Yrs in Sn Afr. 254The Meester deserves a separate notice. The tutor, who teaches the ingenuous youth of Southern Africa, is generally a discharged English soldier, and leads a kind of middle life, a connecting link between the family and the slaves.
1835 J.W.D. Moodie Ten Yrs in S. Afr. II. 301When a farmer wishes to have his children taught to read and write, he gets some of his neighbours to join him in hiring a schoolmaster at the lowest rate of wages...The ‘meester,’ as he is called, is generally referred to when his learning is required to solve any difficult point in the course of conversation.
1835 A. Steedman Wanderings II. 63The ‘Meister’ was generally found in the family of the Boor whose circumstances would allow of such an addition to the household; but..his qualifications were seldom of much consideration.
1847 ‘A Bengali’ Notes on Cape of G.H. 27The Dutch..are generally..instructed by ‘Meesters’ as they call them, — itinerant pedagogues of little knowledge and of dissolute habits.
1871 J. Mackenzie Ten Yrs N. of Orange River 25Those parents who can afford the paltry salary secure the services of a ‘meester,’ or family tutor.
1883 M.A. Carey-Hobson Farm in Karoo 185The ‘Meester’ or tutor, an institution on all Dutch farms of any size..is, or was until lately, very often a man totally unfitted for the post of tutor to youth of any sort.
1883 M.A. Carey-Hobson Farm in Karoo 186The Meester’s salary is paid in sheep.
1896 M.A. Carey-Hobson At Home in Tvl 302He knew the old school ‘Meester’ too — the one we have called the English-speaking Boer.
1911 D.B. Hook ’Tis but Yesterday 126George was twenty years of age, with a clever brain, and with the knowledge he had acquired from the meester was fairly, if roughly, equipped for life’s battle.
1912 F. Bancroft Veldt Dwellers 60The men were..both educated by the same worthy pedagogue — the broken-down-gentleman school-meester — speaking both the taal and English with equal fluency.
1937 F.B. Young They Seek a Country 326There were many men of his kind, old soldiers, English and German, attached to the households of frontier Boers in those days...They acted as ‘meesters,’ being allotted the task of instructing the children of the family in reading and writing and ciphering.
1949 L.G. Green In Land of Afternoon 145Itinerant teachers. Known as ‘meesters’, they were nevertheless expected to help in the farm work after school hours.
1958 R.E. Lighton Out of Strong 46‘It must be a good thing to be on the school committee.’ ‘Not always...It’s that way if the other members and the meester are reasonable people.’
1969 D. Child Yesterday’s Children 50The eighteenth century saw the emergence at the Cape of a type of schoolmaster mercifully long vanished.., the itinerant meester who moved from farm to farm in the wild interior..where schools were non-existent.
1976 A.R. Willcox Sn Land 165The meester had low standing, had to help the farmer with his figuring and writing and do any other odd jobs about the place.
1990 Sunday Times 25 Mar. 5The..English girl arrives in the village like a blackboard bombshell...But she wins their respect and sparks a romance with their Meester.
b. As a term of address or reference to a teacher; a title, used with a surname.
1943 I. Frack S. Afr. Doctor 107The farmer is so taken up with his own troubles that he leaves everything to ‘Meester’. The teacher’s training is provided free.
1944 ‘Twede in Bevel’ Piet Kolonel 120‘Meester’ Cilliers, ex-schoolmaster, was a great find as lecturer.
1966 W.P. Carstens Social Structure Cape Coloured Reserve 100Various titles are given to people holding special positions in the community. All teachers and former teachers are addressed as Meester.
1980 E. Joubert Long Journey of Poppie Nongena 20The teacher, Meester Riet, came to school on his bicycle.
1982 C. Barnard in E. Prov. Herald 20 Sept. 8At school I can remember addressing men teachers as ‘meester’. Nobody thought it demeaning.
1990 C. Laffeaty Far Forbidden Plains 47It was Meester who taught at the farm school which had been established four years ago.
2. [Dutch] Obsolete except in historical contexts. A doctor.
1812 A. Plumptre tr. of H. Lichtenstein’s Trav. in Sn Afr. (1928) I. 88The Dutch ship surgeons are called in the sailor’s language meester, (master) and this term, with many others used by the sailors, has been adopted as the language in common use among the colonists.
1958 E.H. Burrows Hist. of Medicine 19Apart from the guild surgeons and the doctoren..there were also lesser types of practitioners abroad in the countryside...The operateurs, the itinerant meesters who made a living by removing gravel and operating for cataract or hare-lip.
1972 N. Sapeika in Std Encycl. of Sn Afr. VII. 303The popularity of patent medicines inland, and the earlier activities of the ‘wonderdoeners’, ‘meesters’, and itinerant ‘doctors’ who travelled among the Trek Boers.
A resident tutor hired by rural families; an itinerant schoolmaster. Also with qualifying word, school-meester.
As a term of address or reference to a teacher; a title, used with a surname.
A doctor.
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17981990

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meerkat, nounn.meid, nounn.
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