boatbearer

See also: boat bearer

English

Etymology

boat +‎ bearer

Noun

boatbearer (plural boatbearers)

1. A clergyman who carries the incense before it is lit.
   • 1916, James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Macmillan Press Ltd, paperback, page 47)

     He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be dressed as a boatbearer, the evening of the procession to the little altar in the wood.