Also splacnunc. [Invented by Swift.] An imaginary animal of Brobdingnag; a strange animal or person.
1726. Swift, Gulliver, II. ii. That my master had found a strange animal in the field, about the bigness of a splacknuck.
1807. W. Irving, Salmag. (1811), I. 68. Philadelphians gave the preference to racoon and splacnuncs.
1820. Examiner, 1 Oct., 626/1. In the grip of the farmer at Botley we accordingly leave this reverend splacknuck.
1842. Tennyson, in H. Tennyson, Mem. (1897), I. vii. 180. Your modern ladies shriek at a pipe as if they saw a ‘splacknuck.’
