Wine-bibber

Also 6 wyne bebber. [f. WINE sb.¹ + BIBBER sb. Invented by Coverdale to render Luther’s säufer, weinsäufer.]

  1.  A tippler, a drunkard. Now literary and arch.

1535.  Coverdale, Prov. xxiii. 20. Kepe no company with wyne bebbers and ryotous eaters of flesh. Ibid., Matt. xi. 19.

1609.  Dekker, Gull’s Horn-bk., Proem. B 2 b. An honest red-nosed wine bibber.

a. 1704.  T. Brown, Char. Jacobite Clergy, Wks. 1711, IV. 266. Look into their Conversation and you’ll find them Wine-bibbers to the highest Excess.

1778.  [W. Marshall], Minutes Agric., Digest, 8. He commences wine-bibber at Fair and at Market.

1807.  W. Irving, Salmag., xvi. (1824), 300. When the guzzlers, the gormandizers, and the wine-bibbers meet together.

1870.  Bryant, Iliad, I. I. 13. Wine-bibber, with the forehead of a dog And a deer’s heart.

  † 2.  A name for the African genet (Genetta pardina). Obs.

1705.  trans. Bosman’s Guinea, xiv. 252. The Negroes call it Berbe, and the Europeans Wine-bibber, because ’tis very greedy of Palm-Wine.

1771.  Pennant, Syn. Quadr., 237.

  So Wine-bibbing vbl. sb. (also attrib.) and ppl. a.; also Wine-bibbery, wine-bibbing.

1549.  Coverdale, etc., Erasm. Par. 1 Pet. iv. 1–7. Nowe in stedde of outragious luste, chastitie is pleasaunte:… for wynnebybbyng, sobrietie.

a. 1593.  Marlowe, Ovid’s Elegies, III. i. Wine-bibbing banquets.

1603.  H. Crosse, Vertues Commw. (1878), 140. O what lamentable Tragedies is by this Vice acted among wine-bibbing companions.

1816.  Scott, Old Mort., v. To … close your evening with wine-bibbing in public-houses and market-towns.

1832.  J. Wilson, Noctes Ambros., in Blackw. Mag., Sept., 398. The secret antiquities and private history of royal wine-bibbery.

1873.  H. Morley, 1st Sk. Engl. Lit., ii. 25. Wine-bibbing monks.