Word.ws English Dictionary

pure finder

pure finder noun: someone who collected dog faeces for sale to tanneries (which used it as a siccative for bookbinding leather). Undertaken by poor people in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Noun

pure finder (plural pure finders)

  1. (obsolete) Someone who collected dog faeces for sale to tanneries (which used it as a siccative for bookbinding leather). Undertaken by poor people in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.
    • The pure-finders meet with a ready market for all the dogs’-dung they are able to collect, at the numerous tanyards in Bermondsey.1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2, page 14
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pure, finder.
    • As one commentator has noted, although a pure finder may "induce the purchase or sale of" a security within the meaning of Section 15(a)(1), he or she is not normally a "broker" because he or she effects no transactions.2001 July, Howard S. Meyers, Finder's fee agreements: Potential pitfalls and considerations, The Attorney-CPA, published 2002, page 3

Forms of pure finder

pluralpure finders
alternative formpure collector
alternative formpure gatherer

Questions about pure finder

What does pure finder mean?
Pure finder means someone who collected dog faeces for sale to tanneries (which used it as a siccative for bookbinding leather). Undertaken by poor people in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.
What part of speech is pure finder?
Pure finder is a noun.
What is the plural of pure finder?
The plural of pure finder is pure finders.

Words near pure finder in the dictionary

  1. pure ego
  2. pure egos
  3. pure endowment
  4. pure endowments
  5. pure evil
  6. pure finder
  7. pure finders
  8. pure gatherer
  9. pure gatherers
  10. pure good
  11. pure imaginary number

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pure finder (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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