[f. STINK v. + -ER1.] One who or something that stinks.
1. = STINKARD 1. vulgar.
1607. Dekker & Webster, North-w. Hoe, IV. i. F 1 b. I smelt out my noble stincker Greensheild in his Chamber.
1622. Massinger & Dekker, Virg. Martyr, II. i. D i. This boone Bacchanalian stinker did I make legges to.
1898. Daily News, 23 July, 9/4. He had called her ‘a stinker’ and ‘a stinking idiot.’
1913. Webster, Stinker (slang), one who is disgustingly contemptible, a stinkard.
† 2. A pot or jar containing a disinfectant. Obs.
1665. G. Harvey, Disc. Plague (1673), 154. The Air may be purified … by burning of Stinck pots or Stinckers, as they call them, in contagious Lanes.
3. Anything that emits an offensive smell. vulgar.
1898. Westm. Gaz., 29 Oct., 6/3. These gas cars were locally although vulgarly called ‘Stinkers.’
1907. Daily Chron., 13 Aug., 2/7. Suppose I am compelled to smoke a cigar, I may purchase a few nasty penny ‘stinkers,’ and keep within the order of the restaurant edict.
4. pl. (See quot. 1841.) local.
1841. Hartshorne, Salop. Ant., Gloss., Stinkers, Stinking-coal, a very inferior kind of coal which bears its title from the disagreeable smell of sulphur which it emits in burning.
5. A sailor’s name for the giant fulmar (Ossifraga gigantea) and other ill-smelling petrels.
1896. Newton, Dict. Birds, Stinkpot, Stinker, sailors’ names for some of the Petrels.
1906. W. L. Sclater, Stark’s Birds S. Africa, IV. 475. Majaqueus æquinoctialis.… ‘Stinker’ of Sealers and Whalers.
