subs. (old).—1. See quot. 1748: the privileged places referred to were such as Whitefriars, the Mint, Higher and Lower Alsatia, etc.
c. 1696. B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. BOLTER OF WHITE FRIERS, c. one that Peeps out, but dares not venture abroad, as a Coney bolts out of the Hole in a Warren, and starts back again.
1748. T. DYCHE, A New General English Dictionary (5 ed.). BOLTER (s.), a cant name for one who hides himself in his own house, or some privileged place, and dares only peep, but not go out of his retreat.
2. (common).—One who ‘bolts’; especially applied to horses, but figuratively to persons in the sense of one given to throwing off restraint; in American parlance one who KICKS (q.v.).
1840. THACKERAY, The Paris Sketch Book (1872), 244. The engine may explode … or be a BOLTER.
1850. F. E. SMEDLEY, Frank Fairlegh, xiii. ‘Three of the horses had never been in harness before, and the fourth was a BOLTER.’
1852. DICKENS, Bleak House, lviii., 483. This sparkling sally is to the effect that, although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in the stud, he had no idea she was a BOLTER. It is immensely received in turf-circles.
1851. C. J. DUNPHIE, The Chameleon, 17. It is better to ride a steady old plodder than to trust your neck to a BOLTER.
3. (American).—One who exercises the right of abstention in regard to party requirements.
1883. GEORGE WALTON GREEN, Our Nominating Machines, in The Atlantic Monthly, LII. 327. To whom a ‘scratcher’ or a ‘BOLTER’ is more hateful than the Beast.
1884. American, VIII., 100. To denounce the twenty-seven as BOLTERS from their party.
