mulchmancer

sacerdotal [sas-er-doht-l]

adjective:
of, relating to, or characteristic of priests
characterized by belief in the divine authority of the priesthood

Examples:

He seemed indeed a sacerdotal figure - a high priest who offered his own life before accepting the animal's. Every one of us was transfigured by the rite. (Christopher North, Taurine state of grace , The Critic, March 2021 )

After the reading - ‘Neither pray I for these alone...' - one of the ladies was so pleased with the sacerdotal language that she blew me a kiss across the aisle. (Jason Goodwin, 'When someone dies, you can lose a place, as well as a person', Country Life, June 2019)

In the meltdown's aftermath, a small unregulated bank is unusually suspect, especially when operating in a 'sacerdotal-monarchical state established under the 1929 Lateran Treaty' and reporting to an abstract nominee with an ethereal address. Nor can it help that the bank is a market-maker in loaves and fishes. (Matthew Stevenson, The Vatican Bank: In God We Trust?, newgeography, May 2013)

The brand inspires a sacerdotal devotion in many of its workers (its archives contain the papers of one of the atelier's premieres, or heads, who served from 1947 to 1990). (Matthew Schneier, Atop Dior, Balancing Art and Commerce, The New York Times, July 2017)

He would immerse himself in the sacerdotal labor of translation. (Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl)

Vixeela herself had at one time been numbered among the virgins but had fled from the temple and from Uzuldaroum several years before the sacerdotal age of release from her bondage. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles)

Having fixed upon this, I hired a little bark to Jubo, a place about forty leagues distant from Pate, on board which I put some provisions, together with my sacerdotal vestments, and all that was necessary for saying mass: in this vessel we reached the coast, which we found inhabited by several nations: each nation is subject to its own king; these petty monarchies are so numerous, that I counted at least ten in less than four leagues. (Father Lobo, A Voyage to Abyssinia)

One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states. (Herman Melville, Typee)

Origin:

'of or belonging to priests or the priesthood,' c 1400, from Old French sacerdotal and directly from Latin sacerdotalis 'of or pertaining to a priest,' from sacerdos (genitive sacerdotis) 'priest,' literally 'offerer of sacrifices or sacred gifts,' from sacer 'holy' (see sacred) + stem of dare 'to give' (from PIE root do- 'to give'). (Online Etymological Dictionary)

Sacerdotal is one of a host of English words derived from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning 'sacred.' Other words derived from sacer include desecrate, sacrifice, sacrilege, consecrate, sacrament, and even execrable (developed from the Latin word exsecrari, meaning 'to put under a curse'). One surprising sacer descendant is sacrum, referring to the series of five vertebrae in the lower back connected to the pelvis. In Latin this bone was called the os sacrum, or 'holy bone,' a translation of the Greek hieron osteon. (Merriam-Webster)

mudlark [muhd-lahrk]

noun:
1a Chiefly British. a person who gains a livelihood by searching for iron, coal, old ropes, etc., in mud or low tide
1b someone who scavenges the banks and shores of rivers for items of value

2 Chiefly British Informal. a street urchin

3 either of two black and white birds, Grallina cyanoleuca, of Australia, or G. bruijni, of New Guinea, that builds a large, mud nest

(click to enlarge)

Mudlarking's popularity has grown steadily in recent years, driven in part by social media communities where enthusiasts share their finds, and tour groups that offer a trudge through the shards of history's castoffs (Megan Specia, Mudlarks Scour the Thames to Uncover 2,000 Years of Secrets, The New York Times, February 2020)

On a freezing January day during the recent cold snap, those walking along The Weirs might have been surprised to see Jane Eastman - Winchester's premier mudlark - waist-deep in the Itchen, bent double as she scoured the riverbed not so much for treasure, as trash. (Sebastian Haw, Hampshire mudlark looks for treasure and trash in Itchen, Hampshire Chronicle, January 2025)

Thames mud - damp and oxygen-free - is a 'magical preserver', Maiklem writes, and extracting an object from its embrace takes care, skill and an extraordinary level of patience, from both the mudlark and those who share her household. (Joanna Scutts, Unearthing London's history from a muddy riverbank, The Washington Post, December 2019)

"It always makes me smile, how emphatically people say, 'the piping shrike — that's the mudlark, we call it the mudlark' … and just how powerfully this myth has stuck," he said. (Daniel Keane, Magpies, magpie-larks and the striking mystery of South Australia's piping shrike, ABC News, March 2024)

Origin:

The first published use of the word was in 1785 as a slang term meaning 'a hog'. Its origin may have been a humorous variation on 'skylark'. By 1796, the word was also being used to describe "Men and boys ... who prowl about, and watch under the ships when the tide will permit." Mudlarks made a living in London in the 18th and 19th centuries by scouring the muddy shores of the River Thames for anything and everything that could be sold to eke out a living. This could include pilfering from river traffic. Modern mudlarks have sometimes recovered objects of archaeological value from the river's shores. These are either recorded as treasure under the Treasure Act of 1996 or submitted for analysis and review under the Portable Antiquities Scheme. (Word Genius)