snotter

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɒtə(ɹ)

Etymology 1

Noun

snotter (plural snotters)

1. (nautical) A rope going over a yardarm, used to bend a tripping line to, in sending down topgallant and royal yards in vessels of war; also, the short line supporting the heel of the sprit in a small boat.

Alternative forms

• snouter

Etymology 2

Verb

snotter (third-person singular simple present snotters, present participle snottering, simple past and past participle snottered)

1. (intransitive) To snivel; to cry or whine.
   • 1785, William Hutton, A Bran New Wark:

     Araund the woman her lile ans ſprawl'd on the hearth, ſome, whiting ſpeals, ſome, ſnottering and crying, and ya ruddy cheek'd lad threw on a bullen to make a loww, for its mother to find her loup.

   • 1818 July 25, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, III, or IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Company, →OCLC:

     What signified his bringing a woman here to snotter and snivel, and bather their Lordships?

   • 2021, Alison Craig, Blue Skies at the Birdie and Bramble:

     'Aaaaaah. and that's another thing, I want a home,' I snottered. What the hell was going on? I was an emotional wreck […]

2. (colloquial) To smack; to hit
   • 2013, Maurice Procter, Devil's Due:

     'You snottered a sergeant, didn't you? My oh my! Clouting a police sergeant is something I've dreamed about for years.'

Noun

snotter (countable and uncountable, plural snotters)

1. The wattles of a turkeycock.
2. (Scotland) Snot; mucus.
3. (UK, slang, obsolete) A handkerchief.
   • 1849, The Ragged School Union Magazine, volumes 1-2, page 175:

     We had our regular rendezvous, […] where we refreshed ourselves with meat and drink, sung obscene and abominable songs […] , instructed the younger members systematically in prigging (stealing,) concerted robberies, washed and valued "snotters" (handkerchiefs,) and disposed of them, besides the other practices of a nefarious and abandoned fraternity.

4. (UK, slang, obsolete) A pickpocket who steals handkerchiefs.
   • 2020, Ellie Jacobs, The Last Orphan: A Victorian Romance:

     You're barely breaking even with the snotters stealing handkerchiefs in the square.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “snotter”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• Stentor, stentor