Genealogy Chat

I've found the following phrase which I think may be an occupation
"tireur de greve" Babel fish is giving me a literal translation "gunner of strike" but I wonder if it has another meaning.
Thanks

A tireur is normally a sniper. Maybe he shot strikers - probably been out of work since the fall of the Thatcher government.

It certainly sounds like a rifleman or sniper who's on strike. (Doesn't make sense to me!)

Can you tell us what it's from? Perhaps you can list the whole sentence so we can get the context.

Rose

Ignore Babelfish - it comes up with a load of rubbish.

A grève can be a strike (as in going on strike) and a tireur can be a marksman, but the two put together make no sense at all.

I would guess it's something like a sand quarryman, because grève also means the strip of sand along a river bank or sea shore, and tirer can mean extract. Tireur de tourbe means peat-digger.

It can't be a common expression, because it's not in any of my French dictionaries.

I put it in google and it asked "do you mean "titre due greve" - does that help?

I googled it and got a photo of a postcard, Chalons sur Marne, la maison d'un tireur de greve. (Chalons on the Marne, the house of (a you know what)
The house looks like it's in the middle of the river.

"I put it in google and it asked "do you mean "titre due greve" - does that help?"

No, sorry, that doesn't help at all, it's totally meaningless.

ah well, back to the drawing board then

Think it could mean pool or snooker player?

Or even footballer?

the verb tirer can mean to pull to haul to stretch to pull out extract pull off draw print off fire let off or gain
greve can mean shore beach strand or
srike
so it could mean somone who works on a beach and helps to haul boats out

Just asked a friend who teaches French. She says it could be a beachcomber.

It certainly doesn't mean a footballer or pool player - where on earth does that idea come from?

Literally, it's a beach-taker or digger, which is why I guessed at a sand quarryman.

I'd thought of beachcomber and discounted it, because my dictionaries translate that as "ramasseur d'épaves". However, I've now found a couple of references to "batteur de grève", which does mean beachcomber, so I guess "tireur de grève" might be an old-fashioned way of saying it.

Dredger ?????

Derek

I am so sorry to have not got back to you all. Thank you for your ideas. Its on ancestry.fr in some marriage banns transcriptions. (Do you think I can find one example now. How annoying!) I think one of the men concerned was related to my ggrandfather. Now ggrandfathers family run a lucrative translation service on board ocean liners. Ggrandfather married the daughter of an Iron works owner. I wondered if it could be the french equivalent of a hammerman.

There is also another possibility. As it was during the time of the Franco Prussian war I wondered if it was related to the soldiers/privateers who were recruited from the gun clubs in France.

well when I googled for a translation, although I couldn't read most of what was on the page!!! I could read "Resistance fighters" and "geurrillas" so sounds a bit like mercenaries

No, Janet, there's definitely nothing military about it.

Ann, those Google translations are totally useless. Most words have more than one meaning, and automatic translators can't tell from the context which one to use, so the resuls are often wildly wrong.

ah well - should've paid more attention in French class!!!
I'll ask my daughter in law - she's Belgian, expect she'll know

Ann,

I would say that resistance fighters and guerillas were almost the opposite of mercenaries.

Peter