Mosstroopers, a sort of rebels in the northern part of Scotland, that live by robbery and spoil, like the tories in Ireland, or the banditti in Italy.—Phillips, New World of Words, ed. 1706.
Trade. Properly that path which we ‘tread,’ and thus the ever recurring habit and manner of our life, whatever this may be.
A postern with a blinde wicket there was,
A common trade to passe through Priam’s house.
Earl of Surrey, Translation of the Æneid, b. ii. l. 592.
For him that lacketh nothing necessary, nor hath cause to complain of his present state, it is a great folly to leave his old acquainted trade of life, and to enter into another new and unknown.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 53.
Teach a child in the trade of his way, and when he is old, he shall not depart from it.—Proverbs xxii. 6. Geneva.
There those five sisters had continuall trade,
And used to bath themselves in that deceiptful shade.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 12, 30.