[f. THUMP v. + -ER1.]
1. One who or that which thumps.
In quots. c. 1537, a. 1619, app. a cant name for some class of ‘rogue,’ or for some coin. In quot. 1728, applied to the striking apparatus of a clock.
c. 1537. Thersites, in Four Old Plays (1848), 81. Tynckers,… tryfullers, turners, and trumpers, Tempters, traytoures, trauaylers, and thumpers.
a. 1619. Fletcher, Mad Lover, V. iv. Chi. (Takes out his purse, and shakes it.)… Here are thumpers, chequins, golden rogues.
1728. Ramsay, To Starrat, 18. The thumper that tells hours upon the kirk.
1824. New Monthly Mag., XII. 344/2. The thumper on the great drum.
2. A thumping or heavy blow.
1682. T. Flatman, Heraclitus Ridens, No. 67 (1713), II. 163. I’ll give you such a Thumper shall make your Shoulders ake.
3. Anything ‘thumping’ or strikingly big of its kind, esp. a ‘thumping’ lie; a ‘whopper,’ ‘whacker’: cf. BOUNCER 3, 4. colloq.
1660. Tatham, Charac. Rump, Dram. Wks. (1878), 287. You may call it the tail of the great dragon, and ’tis a thumper.
1677. W. Hughes, Man of Sin, III. iii. 97. For Thumpers commend me to Abbot Bar, and St. Brendons Stories.
1711. Swift, Jrnl. to Stella, 8 Sept. You are apt to lie in your travels, though not so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers.
1804. J. Collins, Scripscrap., 157. They gives me a Thumper of a Christmas Box.
1863. J. R. Green, Lett., II. (1901), 125. His lies are such thumpers.
