Chiefly Sc. and north. dial. [f. the vb.]
Various other dial. senses are recorded in the Eng. Dial. Dict. and Jamieson’s Sc. Dict.
1. A strong or rough breeze or wind.
1789. [see SNIFFLER 1].
1866–. in northern dial. glossaries.
1886. Bret Harte, Snowbound, 121. This is no blizzard, but a regular two-days’ snifter.
1898. F. T. Bullen, Cruise ‘Cachalot,’ xxvi. 350. There came a ‘snifter’ from the hills that caught her unprepared, making her reel again.
2. pl. A bad cold in the head, or the stoppage of the nostrils caused by this; the snuffles. Also, a disease of poultry (see quot. 1844). Sc.
1808. Jamieson, Snifters, a stoppage of the nostrils from cold, which occasions frequent sniffing.
1828. Moir, Mansie Wauch, xvii. I asked him … about … curing the sturdie, and the snifters.
1837. Mrs. Carlyle, Lett., I. 71. The blessedness of having a head clear of snifters.
1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, II. 260. The only disease [among fowls] I can remember to have seen in winter is what is vulgarly called the snifters, that is, a discharge of matter from the nose, which causes a noise in the nose like stifled breathing.
3. A sniff. Chiefly dial.
a. 1835. Hogg, Good Man Alloa, xxxiii. Poems (1865), 309. The palfrey dash’d o’er the bounding wave, with snifter and with stenne.
1866–. in Sc., Yks., Lancs. dial. glossaries and texts (Eng. Dial. Dict.).
1884. J. Purves, in Good Words, May, 324–5. With a snifter of the nostrils he emits a dry, respiratory sound like a young crow at its food.
