[f. WINE sb.1 + PRESS sb.1 11. Cf. MLG. wînperse, MHG. wînpresse (G. weinpresse).] A press in which the juice is extracted from the grapes in the manufacture of wine. Also fig., esp. with ref. to Isa. lxiii. 3, Rev. xiv. 19, 20, xix. 15.
1526. Tindale, Matt. xxi. 33. [He] set a vyneyarde, and hedged it rounde about, and made a wynpresse in it.
1584. J. Melvill, Autob. (Wodrow Soc.), 177. They haiff cast down the dyk, cutted the hedge, demolished the towre brokin the wyne-pres.
1611. Donne, Ess. Div. (1651), 24. To put him [sc. Moses] in a wine-presse, and squeeze out Philosophy and particular Christianitie, is a degree of that injustice, which all laws forbid.
1671. Milton, P. R., IV. 16. As a swarm of flies … About the wine-press where sweet moust is powr’d.
1712. Budgell, Spect., No. 425, ¶ 3. The succeeding Month [sc. October] was all soiled with the Juice of Grapes, as if he had just come from the Wine-Press.
1813. Shelley, Q. Mab, VII. 218. Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty’s wrath.
1849. Froude, Nem. Faith, 107. He must tread the wine-press alone, calling no God-fearing man his friend.
1875. Ure’s Dict. Arts, III. 1140. In the United States the wine-press is constructed much on the same principle as the ordinary screw cider-press.
1910. E. Barker, in Encycl. Brit., VII. 524/2. [The Crusader] might butcher all day,… and then at nightfall kneel … at the altar of the Sepulchre—for was be not red from the winepress of the Lord?
Hence † Wine-presser.
1632. Sherwood, A Wine=presser, pressureur.
