subs. (pugilistic).—1. A prize-fighter; a boxer: see HITTITE and LAMB. Hence (common), a fighting-man; a CHUCKER-OUT (q.v.). Also BRUISING = prize-fighting, boxing; and BRUISE (q.v.).
1744. Nov. 26. WALPOLE, Letter to Sir Horace Mann (1833), II., 57. He let into the pit great numbers of Bear-garden BRUISERS (that is the term), to knock down every body that hissed.
1751. SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, c. The combatants were, in point of strength and agility, pretty equally matched; but the jailer had been regularly trained to the art of BRUISING.
1753. SMOLLETT, The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom (L.). An old bruiser makes a good BOTTLE-HOLDER.
1753. FOOTE, The Englishman in Paris, i. Dick Daylight and Bob Breadbasket, the BRUISERS.
1772. BRIDGES, A Burlesque Translation of Homer, 2.
| And, in a manner quite uncivil, | |
| Sent fifty BRUISERS to the devil. |
1830. S. WARREN, Diary of a Late Physician, xii. The man last named was short in stature, but of a square iron build; and it needed only a glance at his posture to see he was a scientific, perhaps a thorough-bred BRUISER.
1846–48. THACKERAY, Vanity Fair, xi. At college he pulled stroke-oar in the Christchurch boat, and had thrashed all the best BRUISERS of the ‘town.’
1855. THACKERAY, The Newcomes, x. At that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports of boxing matches. BRUISING was considered a fine manly old English custom.
1855. TOM TAYLOR, Still Waters Run Deep, ii. 1. Mrs. S. If a man gave you a blow, what would you do? Mildmay. Hit him again. Mrs. S. Yes, if he were a BRUISER.
1860. THACKERAY, The Adventures of Philip, xlii. A jolly wag, a fellow of indifferent character, a frequenter of all the alehouses in the neighbourhood, and rather celebrated for his skill as a BRUISER.
1860. THACKERAY, The Adventures of Philip, xxxv. Mugford always persisted that he could have got the better of his great hulking sub-editor, who did not know the use of his fists. In Mugford’s youthful time, BRUISING was a fashionable art.
1880. GREENWOOD, At Flyfaker’s Hotel, in Odd People in Odd Places, 58. Nearly every one seemed to have some little job or other that was necessary to be done at this almost last moment for the business of to-morrow; even one of the two villanous-looking ‘BRUISERS’ had. They were of the very lowest of the ‘rough’ type—broken-nosed, besotted, pimple-visaged, and unwholesome-looking fellows, whose foul and blasphemous language seemed to pollute the pestilent air of the place more than anything else that contributed thereto.
1897. MARSHALL, Pomes, 87. A BRUISER … socked her in the eye … and stars she’d often view.
2. (thieves’).—A prostitute’s bully; a FANCY MAN (q.v.).
1885. DAVITT, Leaves from a Prison Diary, I. i. That nearest approach to [Dickens’ hero] Bill Sykes in style of dress and face, the BRUISER.
