slang. [Origin obscure; with sense 1 cf. BUFE, BUGHER; with 2 and 3 cf. BUFFER1 and BUFFARD; (but also the use of dog in sense 3).]
1. A dog. b. transf. A pistol; = BARKER 4.
[1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. iii. § 68. Cant Voc., Buffar, Dog-like.]
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., Buffer, a dog.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, ch. iii. Here be a pair of buffers will bite as well as bark.
2. Sc. & dial. ‘A foolish fellow’ Jamieson, 1808.
3. A fellow: usually expressing a slight degree of contempt.
1749. H. Fitzcotton, Homer, I. (1748), 23. You’re a buffer always rear’d in The brutal pleasures of Bear-garden.
1835. Marryat, Jacob Faithf., xxx. As the old buffer, her father, says.
1863. Miss Braddon, Lady Audley, iv. 30. I always said the old buffer would.
1876. Mary Cecil Hay, Nora’s Love Test, I. 119 I have only a chance, at best, of three or four hundred a year, unless some impossible old buffer is struck by one of my sermons.
