[f. WHIP v. + -ER1.] One who or that which whips, in various senses.
1. One who beats or chastises with (or as with) a whip; a scourger, flogger; spec. an official who inflicts whipping as a legal punishment. Also fig.
1552. Huloet, Whypper who whyppeth beggers and vacaboundes, or others, plagiarius.
1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, V. iii. Ambitiously, affecting the title of the vntrussers, or whippers of the age.
1628. Feltham, Resolves, II. [I.] l. 147. It is the basest Office Man can fall into, to mak his tongue the Whipper of the Worthy man.
1697. J. Partridge (title), Flagitiosus Mercurius flagellatus; or the Whipper whipp’d.
1813. E. S. Barrett, Heroine, xvi. (1909), 88. At last, marrying some honest gentleman,… she degenerates into a dangler of keys and whipper of children.
1841. Orderson, Creoleana, ix. 96. The brutal hand of the mercenary whipper.
1886. 8th Rep. Prison Comm. Scot., 6. The case against the boy was accordingly delayed,… because a whipper could not be found.
b. = FLAGELLANT A. 1.
a. 1656. Bp. Hall, Serm. 1 Cor. xi. 10, Wks. 1808, V. 487. A brood of mad heretics,… whom they called Flagellantes, ‘the whippers’; which went about … lashing themselves to blood.
1782. Priestley, Corrupt. Chr., II. IX. 213. The whippers … ran about in promiscuous multitudes.
c. = WHIPPER-IN 1, 2. ? Obs.
1826. Sporting Mag. (N. S.), XVII. 366. John Roberts the huntsman, and Will Veale the whipper.
1884. Gladstone, in Western Daily Press, 12 July, 8/1. The authority, for every loyal Liberal, of the whipper.
d. A kind of fishing-rod: see quot., and cf. WHIP v. 8.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. iii. 103/1. A Whipper, or Whipping Rod is a slender top Rod, that is weak in the middle and top heavy, but all slender and fine.
2. A person or thing that surpasses others. (Cf. WHIP v. 12.) ? Obs. exc. dial. applied to a big active person.
c. 1520. Boke of Mayd Emlyn, 356, in Hazlitt, Early Pop. Poetry, IV. 94. Bycause he coude clepe her, She called hym a whypper.
1540. J. Heywood, Four PP., C i b. This relyke, her is a whipper … here is a slypper Of one of the seuen slepers.
3. A workman who hoists coal with a ‘whip’: = COAL-WHIPPER. (Cf. WHIP v. 5.)
1835–6. Barlow, in Encycl. Metrop. (1845), VIII. 87/1. The four whippers now run up a sort of step-ladder.
1836–9, etc. [see COAL-WHIPPER].
1887. R. Newman in Charity Org. Rev., July, 275. Coal-whipping … has now all but ceased; but a similar class of men … are probably as numerous as were the whippers of twenty years ago.
4. One who runs the colored thread along the edge of a blanket. (Cf. WHIP v. 18.)
1881. Instr. Census Clerks (1885), 66. Blanket Manufacture;… Tucker. Whipper. Binder.
