also squailer, verb. and subs. (old).—See quot. 1847. Also SQUAWL.

1

  1651.  [HUNT, Bristol, quoted in Notes and Queries, 7 S., iv. 169]. SQUAILING a goose before his door, and tossing cats and dogs on Shrove Tuesday.

2

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v. SQUAWL—To throw awry.

3

  1834.  SOUTHEY, The Doctor, clxiv. You SQUAIL at us on Shrove Tuesday … and arm us with steel spurs, that we may mangle and kill each other for your sport.

4

  1847.  HALLIWELL, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, etc., s.v. SQUAIL. To throw sticks at cocks. SQUAILER, the stick thrown. Mr. Akerman says SQWOILING is used for throwing, but the things thrown must be some material not easily managed; with a stick sometimes made unequally heavy by being loaded with lead at one end. SQUAILING is often very awkwardly performed, because the thing thrown cannot be well directed; hence the word SQUAILING is often used in ridicule of what is done awkwardly, untowardly or irregularly shaped. “She went up the street SQUAILING her arms about, you never saw the like:” an ill shaped loaf is a SQUAILING loaf; Brentford is a long SQUAILING town; and, in Wiltshire, Smithfield Market would be called a SQUAILING sort of a place.—[Abridged].

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  1881.  Daily Telegraph, 30 Nov. Now that the trees are bare and the leaves have fallen, the idlers of the county towns may perhaps sally forth armed with SQUAILERS, an ingenious instrument composed of a short stick of pliant cane and a leaded knob, to drive the harmless little squirrel from tree to tree, and lay it a victim at the feet of a successful shots.

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