subs. (Irish).—A term of contempt: see quot. Also (general) SQUIRELET.
1812. EDGEWORTH, The Absentee, vii. SQUIREENS are persons who, with good long leases or valuable farms, possess incomes of from three to eight hundred a year, who keep a pack of hounds, take out a commission of the peace, sometimes before they can spell … and almost always before they knew anything of law or justice.
1839. CARLYLE, Miscellanies, III. 56. A Scottish SQUIRELET, full of gulosity and gigmanity.
1857. C. KINGSLEY, Two Years Ago, viii. A small SQUIREEN cursed with six or seven hundreds a-year of his own, never sent to school, college, or into the army, he had grown up in a narrow circle of SQUIREENS like himself.
1873. R. J. KING, Bodley and the Bodleian, in Fraser’s Magazine, May, 647. The family of Bodley belonged to that class of SQUIRELETS … of which Devonshire in the days of Elizabeth was very full.
