A woman withdrawing her foot in outrage from the care of a corn-cutter who has pretensions to be called a chiropodist. Coloured engraving, 1793.

The operator performs the operation that was previously the remit of the corn cutter, but he claims higher professional status for his role and designates himself a "chiropodist". His customer disputes his claim and mocks his pretensions, claiming that a skilled non-professional such as her maid could do the job better. The Oxford English Dictionary has three quotations fropm the 1780s on the renaming of corn-cutters as chiropodists, including "Chiropodist (anglicè corn-cutter)... the absurdity and needless affectation of learning, the coining of new-fangled derivatives on every occasion" (European Magazine VII. 429)