copyholder

[ kop-ee-hohl-der ]

/ ˈkɒp iˌhoʊl dər /

a person or thing that holds copy.

a device for holding copy in its place, as on a printer's frame or on a typewriter.

a proofreader's assistant who reads copy aloud or follows it while proof is read for the detection of deviations from it in proof.

a person who holds an estate in copyhold.

Origin of copyholder

1425–75; late Middle English. See copyhold, -er¹

In 1581 it interferes to protect a copyholder who has been kept out of his holding by the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough.

The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century |Richard Henry Tawney
Most former electors and every leaseholder and every copyholder were now excluded.

Our Legal Heritage, 5th Ed. |S. A. Reilly
A copyholder without legal remedy may seem little better than a tenant in mere villenage, except in name.

View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Vol. 3 (of 3) |Henry Hallam
For it is the destruction of the inheritance and against the nature of a copyholder for life.

The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century |Richard Henry Tawney

So after a while instead of "villein" he became a "copyholder."

Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899 |Various

copyholder

/ (ˈkɒpɪˌhəʊldə) /

printing one who reads aloud from the copy as the proof corrector follows the reading in the proof

printing a device that holds copy in place for the compositor

law (formerly) a person who held land by copyhold tenure