1. One who coins money; a minter.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 90. Coynowre or coynesmytare, nummularius.
1496. Dives & Paup. (W. de W.), I. xxii. 58/1. Some ben monyours or moneye quyners.
1590. Greene, Mourn. Garm. (1616), Pref. 4. Diogenes of a coyner of money became a Corrector of manners.
1702. Addison, Dial. Medals, i. 29. Designs that never entered into the thoughts of the sculptor or the Coiner.
1861. Dickens, Gt. Expect., xxxii. A Coiner, a very good workman.
fig. 1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., x. The … longest-headed, queerest-tempered old coiner of gold and silver ever was.
2. esp. A maker of counterfeit coin.
1579. Lyly, Euphues (Arb.), 121. You ought … no more to bee agrieued with that whiche I haue saide, then the Mint Maister … to see the coyner hanged.
1611. Shaks., Cymb., II. v. 5. Some Coyner with his Tooles Made me a counterfeit.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 161, ¶ 9. He found the tools of a coiner.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 656. Printers who worked steadily at their calling with precautions resembling those employed by coiners and forgers.
3. fig. An inventor; a deliberate or artful fabricator. Cf. COIN v. 5.
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 480 b. As though he and a few others were the first devisours and coyners of this Gospell.
1605. Camden, Rem., 27. A Greeke coyner of Etymologyes.
1718. Bp. Hutchinson, Witchcraft, Ded. 11. Coiners of Fables.
1824. D’Israeli, Cur. Lit. (1858), III. 44. Swift … was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs.
† b. ? A dissembler, false pretender. Obs. rare.
1634. S. R., Noble Soldier, IV. i. in Bullen, O. Pl., I. 307. Thinke you me a quoyner? No, no, thou art thy selfe still, Noble Baltazar.
