[f. SMILE v.]
1. One who smiles.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Knt.’s T., 1141. Ther saugh I … The smyler with the knyfe vnder the cloke.
1668. Dryden, Even. Love, Epil. 5. Where a lot of Smilers lent an Ear To one that talk’d.
1694. Poet Buffoon’d, 1.
| Much like the Losers and the Winners, | |
| One Smiler and two hundred Grinners. |
1742. Young, Nt. Th., I. 315. Know, smiler! at thy peril art thou pleas’d.
1795. Aikin, Even. Home, xxix. (Dove), 507. Through her pale and emaciated features, he saw something of his little smiler.
1855. Smedley, H. Coverdale, i. A … pleasant smile it was too…, making the smiler look particularly handsome.
1876. T. Hardy, Ethelberta (1890), 279. Noticing that a few Gallic smilers were gathering round.
b. As a moth-name: (see quot.).
1832. J. Rennie, Consp. Butterfl. & Moths, 77. The Smiler (Polia Polymita).
2. slang. A kind of shandy-gaff.
1892. Daily News, 16 Nov., 2/3. A singular mixture of beer and lemonade known in Manchester as a smiler. Ibid. (1900), 30 April, 5/1. To take these generous liquors in the diluted forms of ‘shandy-gaff’ or ‘smiler.’
