[f. WHIFFLE v.1 + -ER1.]
† 1. A smoker of tobacco. Obs. (Cf. WHIFFER.)
1617. Middleton & Rowley, Fair Quarrel, IV. i. How likest thou this, whiffler?
1836. Hor. Smith, Tin Trump., 117. So may we allow Vesuvius and Etna to smoke, without conceding that privilege to every puny whiffler.
2. A trifler; an insignificant or contemptible fellow (cf. WHIFFLING ppl. a.1 3); also, a shifty or evasive person.
1659. Lady Alimony, V. iv. Such Whifflers are below my scorn, and beneath my spite.
1675. Covel, in Early Voy. Levant (Hakl. Soc.), 279. Here are every year abundance of Whiflers in those scraps of learning.
1678. H. More, in Glanvill, Sadducismus, Postscript (1681), 45. O the impudent profaneness … of perverse shufflers and whifflers.
a. 1745. Swift, Public Absurd. Eng., Wks. 1841, II. 311/1. It is a common topic of satire, which you will hear … from the mouths … of every whiffler in office.
1809–12. Maria Edgeworth, Absentee, iv, He was not a whiffler to stand upon ceremony about disturbing a gentleman in his last moments.
1866. J. Martineau, Ess., I. 187. These metaphysical whifflers draw no blood.
1896. Advance (Chicago), 25 June, 935/2. [Giving the Gospel message] requires single-mindedness; no whiffler can succeed.
† 3. A flag. Obs. rare. (Cf. WHIFF sb.1 7.)
1759. Durand, Mem. Capt. Thurot (Percy Soc.), 28. The commodore and second vessel carried white whifflers or pendants forward.
4. The whistlewing or golden-eye duck, Clangula glaucion. local U.S.
1888. G. Trumbull, Names of Birds, 79.
