[f. as prec. + -ER1.] a. One who or that which makes fat. b. One that throws fat. c. With adj.: An animal that fattens (early, late, slowly, etc.).
1611. Cotgr., Graissier … a Grasier, or fattener of cattell.
a. 1735. Arbuthnot, Mart. Scribl. (1742), 14. The wind was at West; a wind on which that great Philosopher bestowed the Encomiums of Fatner of the Earth, Breath of the Elysian Fields, and other glorious eulogies.
1817. T. E. Peacock, Melincourt, xl. Insatiable accumulators, overgrown capitalists, fatteners on public spoil, I cannot but consider as excrescences on the body politic, typical of disease and prophetic of decay: yet it is to these and such as these, that the poet tunes his harp, and the man of science consecrates his labours: it is for them that an enormous portion of the population is condemned to unhealthy manufactories, not less deadly but more lingering than the pestilence: it is for them that the world rings with lamentations, if the most trivial accident, the most transient sickness, the most frivolous disappointment befall them: but when the prisons swarm, when the workhouses overflow, when whole parishes declare themselves bankrupt, when thousands perish by famine in the wintry streets, where then is the poet, where is the man of science, where is the elegant philosopher?
1852. Jrnl. R. Agric. Soc., XIII. I. 193. Their character as rapid and early fatteners.
1884. W. Wren, in Pall Mall G., 14 May, 11/1. There is a difference between crammers and chicken fatteners.
