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I hope I'm not wasting bandwidth... but I'm struggling with a word that is driving me insane.
I'm sure I've heard or seen this word before... but for the life of me I cannot find it in any of today's' dictionaries.
The word sounds like "deaner" or "deener" (but I guess could also be spelled diener)... where I THOUGHT I heard it used once as a name for someone who worked as church sexton or verger or morgue or graveyard attendant. I cannot find this word defined anywhere, yet I am sure it is a word.
Please help before I go crazy… If this really is a name for church custodian or a morgue worker (or anything remotely similar) please contact me and provide some info. If not… I guess it's just some nonsense that I made up!
Ogden Rogers
Professor of Social Work
University of Wisconsin-River Falls, USA
According to "Police Procedure & Investigation: A Guide for Writers" by Lee Lofland, a "diener" is an autopsy technician and means "servant."
Thanks so much to everybody... upon further investigation I did indeed find it also in Dorland' s Illustrated medical dictionary: "from Diener- "servant": a man-of-all-work in a laboratory".
This makes sense... the place where I heared this word first used was a small hospital in Berks County, Pennsylvania, which had a long Pennsylvania German influence in many words.
Ogden Rogers, Ph.D.
Professor of Social Work
University of Wisconsin-River Falls, USA
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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