[f. prec. vb. + -ER1.]
1. A copious drinker. slang or colloq.
1836. F. Mahony, Rel. Father Prout (1859), 179. ‘Consule scholas Jesuitarum,’ exclaims the Lord Chancellor Bacon, who was neither a quack nor a swiper, but ‘spoke the words of sobriety and truth.’
1878. Cumberld. Gloss., Swiper, a hard drinker.
2. One who deals a swipe or driving stroke; also, a swipe.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, II. viii. Jack Raggles the long-stop, toughest and burliest of boys, commonly called ‘Swiper Jack.’
1860. Ld. W. Lennox, Pict. Sporting Life, I. 281. A ‘swiper’ (we adopt the phraseology of an old Westminster) might … smash the pane of a travelling-carriage.
