Wiktionary
n. An outsider working in a circus.
Wikipedia
A Josser is someone who was not born into a circus family, nor married into a circus family, but is in a circus nonetheless. The term is also used (rarely) to refer to a clergyman (Australia), or even more generally, a fool or a simpleton (Britain).
Circus jossers are not rare, but few remain in circus for any long period of time. It is very seldom that a Josser is seen in the upper hierarchy of a professional circus, their status is usually seen as lesser than that of someone of circus descent. This is due to the aforementioned dedication issue. Jossers are at a disadvantage in modern circus, because generally speaking they have not been raised in a circus discipline, or trained to the extent of their circus-born coworkers. Amateur acts (e.g. amateur clowns) are not considered Jossers unless they have worked in larger scale circus.
Such words as joss house, joss flower, and joss stick all refer to Chinese religious traditions.
Category:Circuses Category:Itinerant living Category:Nomads
Usage examples of "josser".
Comtesse, that our shows today will be pelted with vegetables instead of flowers, when the jossers fail to see the pink-clad equestrienne who has for so many months been our star attraction and the toast of all Paris.
Fitz had, for the nearmost of the jossers clamored even more loudly for tickets to a show that so freely displayed such wonders as they had just seen.
Unless I am overruled, I say we continue to show as long as we have a single artiste capable of performing, and a single josser paying admission to see that performance.
Which usually meant, as was the way with those old jossers well above the pensionable age, talking about the dim and distant past when a pint of beer was a pint of beer and the sound of a horse-drawn cart approaching along the road outside was enough to send every self-respecting householder running for his dustpan and broom.
In the sideshow, Fitzfarris delightedly expatiated at length to the jossers on the fact of Princess Brunhilde's pregnancy, and—in a hushed and awful voice—invited them to speculate on what the offspring of a giantess and the horrible Kostchei might look like when it arrived.
She applauded as vigorously as the jossers did, and, though Edge could not see her face, he knew she must be smiling to see so many new acts and so many refinements of the old ones.
Has any fellow, of the dime a dozen type, it might with some profit some dull evening quietly be hinted--has any usual sort of ornery josser, flatchested fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination by syncopation in the elucidation of complications,of his greatest Fung Yang dynasdescendanced,only another the son of, in fact, ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everydaylooking stamped addressed envelope?