tidewaiter

American  

[tahyd-wey-ter] / ˈtaɪdˌweɪ tər /

noun

1. a customs officer who checks goods upon a vessel's landing, to secure the payment of duties.

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tidewaiter British  

/ ˈtaɪdˌweɪtə /

noun

1. (formerly) a customs officer who boarded and inspected incoming ships

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Other Word Forms

• tidewaitership noun

Etymology

Origin of tidewaiter

First recorded in 1700–15; tide ¹ ( def. ) + waiter ( def. )

Example Sentences

A voter was often in search of the place of a 'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest poet of the day could only be rewarded by making him an exciseman.

From Project Gutenberg

Leaving the army, C. held for a time a commission in the mounted constabulary of Madras, and now he is a third class assistant tidewaiter in the Imperial Maritime Customs of China, with a salary as low as his spirits are high.

From Project Gutenberg

Down the river there is a tidewaiter who was formerly professor of French in the Imperial University of St. Petersburg; and here in Chungking, filling the same humble post, is the godson of a marquis and the nephew of an earl, a brave soldier whose father is a major-general and his mother an earl's daughter, and who is first cousin to that enlightened nobleman and legislator the Earl of C. Few men so young have had so many and varied experiences as this sturdy Briton.

From Project Gutenberg

It is true enough that a long course of corruption, beginning with the perjured peer and ending with the tidewaiter, had created a class of conditional loyalists, with nine-tenths of which the condition is always unfulfilled; while, in its very fulfilment, the other one-tenth has found but bitterness, the "sauce piquante" of their daily bread.

From Project Gutenberg

Perhaps they may get that in time; at present they go away growling with a gaugership; or, having with desperate dexterity at length contrived to transform a tidewaiter into a landwaiter.

From Project Gutenberg