watch-jobber

English

Noun

watch-jobber (plural watch-jobbers)

1. (obsolete, UK) A person who repairs and maintains watches.
   • 1881, Claudius Saunier, The Watchmakers’ Hand-Book, translated, revised and augmented by Julien Tripplin and Edward Rigg, London: J. Tripplin, Preface, p. vi,^[2]

     In recent years the work of the ordinary watch-jobber and repairer has undergone considerable change. The apprenticeship he serves, if indeed it can be called a real apprenticeship, is shorter than formerly.

   • 1975, G. J. Marcus, chapter 10, in Heart of Oak: A Survey of British Sea Power in the Georgian Era‎^[3], Oxford University Press, page 144:

     Between the High Street and the shingle beach, divided from the rest of the town by a drawbridge, was Portsmouth Point, ‘the Wapping of Portsmouth’, a picturesque, heterogeneous assemblage of taverns, liquor-shops, eating-houses, cook-shops, tailors, drapers, pawnbrokers, watch-jobbers, and trinket-merchants, backed by a warren of mean streets and alleys.

2. (obsolete, US) A merchant who sells watches on commission for a manufacturer.