MILLENER, or MILLINER, one who sells ribbands and dresses, particularly head dresses for women; and who makes up those dresses. Of this word different etymologies have been given. It is not derived from the French. The French cannot express the notion of milliner, otherwise than by the circumlocution marchand or marchande des modes. Neither is it derived from the Low Dutch language, the great, but neglected, magazine, of the Anglo-Saxon. For Sewel, in his Dictionary English and Dutch, 1708, describes millener to be "a pedlar who sells ribbands and other trimmings or ornaments; a French pedlar."
Littleton, in his English and Latin Dictionary, published 1677, defines millener, "a jack of all trades;" q. d. millenarius, or mille mercium venditor; that is, "one who sells a thousand different sorts of things." From this etymology, which seems fanciful, we must hold, that it then implied what is now termed "a haberdasher of small wares."
Before Littleton's time, however, a somewhat nicer characteristic than seems compatible with his notion, appears to have belonged to them; for Shakespeare, in his Henry IV. makes Hotspur, when complaining of the daintiness of a courtier, say,
"He was perfumed like a milliner."
The fact seems to be, that there were milleners of several kinds: as, horse milleners, (for so those persons were called who make ornaments of coloured worsted for horses); haberdashers of small wares, the milleners of Littleton; and milleners such as those now peculiarly known by that name, whether male or female, and to whom Shakespeare's allusion seems most appropriate.
Lastly, Dr Johnson, in his dictionary, derives the word from milaner, an inhabitant of Milan, from whence people of this profession first came, as a Lombard is a banker.