Definition of "oyster-woman" [oyster-woman]

• A woman who sells oysters. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Hector (as the ballads of those times mention), they were pretty smart fellows; they fought at sword and buckler; but the former had much the better of it; his mother, who was an oyster-woman, having got a blacksmith of Lemnos to make her son's weapons."
• "Only the other day I learned for the first time that my father was a greengrocer, who went in for selling coals by the half-hundred and thereby made his fortune -- my mother was an unsuccessful oyster-woman who failed ignominiously at Margate -- moreover,"
• "Therefore we straggled in a long crowd to Moorgate -- man and maid, noble and 'prentice, alderman and oyster-woman, jesting and scolding as we jostled one another in the narrow way, and rejoicing when at length we broke free into the pleasant meadows and smelt the sweetness of the early hay."