Sniveller

Also 5 sneveler. [f. SNIVEL v.]

  1.  One who snivels or whines. Also in fig. context.

c. 1450.  Cov. Myst. (Shaks. Soc.), 396. I schal snarle tho sneveleris wyth rith scharp schouris.

1731.  Swift, On his Death, Wks. 1755, III. II. 244. [He would] more lament, when I was dead, Than all the sniv’lers round my bed.

1791.  Wolcot (P. Pindar), Ep. to Ld. Lonsdale, Wks. 1812, III. 13. Despise that thing call’d Meekness; ’tis a sniveller.

1905.  C. Holroyd, in Speaker, 25 Feb., 512/2. Savonarola and his Piagnoni or snivellers, like Cromwell and his psalm-singing soldiers, had a fatal influence on art and on all artists who touched them.

  2.  A cold breeze (causing one to snivel).

1834.  Col. Hawker, Diary (1893), II. 69. The pinching ‘sniveller’ was changed to a tempest. Ibid. (1846), 271. A chill that I took in a deadly cold ‘sniveller.’