A mill worker, especially in a textile factory, whose job was to remove (doff) full bobbins of thread or yarn and replace them with empty ones.
Agent noun from 'doff' plus suffix '-er' (one who doffs). Specific to the textile industry, this occupation was common in New England mills during the Industrial Revolution.
In 1800s American textile mills, 'doffers' were usually young girls and children whose job was the repetitive task of swapping bobbins—the word is a linguistic artifact of early industrial labor that shows who did this monotonous work.
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