touser

• towser, towzer

From touse +‎ -er.^[1][2]

touser (plural tousers)

1. One who or that which touses.
2. (dialectal) A large coarse apron.
   • 1865, Robert Hunt, “Peculiar Words and Phrases”, in Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall, 2nd series, London: John Camden Hotten, […], →OCLC, page 244:

     He [a correspondent] continues:—‘[‘]If you were in Buryan Church-town this evening, you might probably hear Betty Trenoweth say, ‘I ’ll take off my touser, [toute serve,] and run up to Janey Angwins to cousey [causer] a spell; there ’s a lot of boys gone in there, so there ’ll be a grand courant, [de courir,] I expect.’ […]” The touser is a large apron or wrapper to come quite round and keep the under garments clean.

   • 1877 January, Marian C[alhoun] L[égaré] Reeves, Emily Read, “Old Martin Boscawen’s Jest”, in Arthur’s Illustrated Home Magazine, volume XLV, number 1, Philadelphia, Pa.: T[imothy] S[hay] Arthur & Son, →ISSN, →OCLC, chapter II, page 28, column 2:

     Leah is comely in the sunshine, Madelon thinks, with her freshly-colored, strongly-marked old Cornish face, framed by black hair just flecked with white, under the broad hat such as the fishwives wear; and the white touser, or quaint apron, gives a natty look to the shortgown.

   • 1984, Judith Cook, quoting James Hosking, “Part 1: Out of the Earth”, in Close to the Earth: Living Social History of the British Isles (Routledge Revivals), Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2025, →ISBN:

     The women, when gathering fuel, often carried a sack to put it in and brought it home on their heads. Other used their “tousers” to carry it up. The touser is a big apron made of sacking with four strings to tie it, two long ones to tie around the waist and two short to tie behind, lower down. They would fill up the touser and tie up the four corners and also carry that on their heads.

   • 1985, Mary Bouquet, Family, Servants and Visitors: The Farm Household in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Devon, Norwich, Norfolk: Geo Books, →ISBN, page 77:

     For outdoor work, which she [Mary] was expected to do, she wore a touser apron: a flour sack cut open and sewn into an apron.

• “touser”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• Souter, Toures, ouster, outers, rouets, routes, souter, trouse