[f. as prec. + -ER1.]
1. One who turns things into ridicule; later, one who indulges in good-humored jest or raillery.
1678. Wood, Life, 6 Sept. (D.). The banterers of Oxford (a set of scholars so called, some M.A.), who make it their employment to talk at a venture, lye and prate what nonsense they please; if they see a man talk seriously, they talk floridly nonsense, and care not what he says. Ibid. (1691), Ath. Oxon., I./834. He being a reputed Banterer, I could never believe him.
1692. E. Walker, Epictetus’ Mor., lxvii. Amongst rude Ignorants … To talk of Precepts, Maxims, and of Rules, Is to be laugh’d at, thought a Banterer.
1706. Collier, Refl. Ridic., 130. Profess’d Banterers chuse rather to disoblige their best Friends, than to lose the opportunity of speaking their Jest.
1847. H. Greville, Leaves fr. Diary, 205. Amusing, but too much of a banterer to please me.
2. One who imposes on, or bamboozles. arch.
1709. Steele, Tatler, No. 12, ¶ 1. Gamesters, banterers, biters … are, in their several species, the modern men of wit.
1712. Arbuthnot, John Bull (1727), 58. A sort of fellows, they call banterers and bamboozlers, that play such tricks.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. iii. 369. An excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and banterers.
