[From the family name Spencer. In sense 1 prob. from that of Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland (1674–1722); in sense 2 from that of George John Spencer, second Earl Spencer (1758–1834); in sense 3 from that of Mr. Knight Spencer (fl. 1803).]
† 1. A kind of wig. Also attrib. Obs.
17[?]. Songs & P. on Costume (Percy Soc.), 206. At us the fribbles may strut and look big, in their spencers, bobs, and ramelies.
1748. Smollett, R. Random, xv. A gold laced hat, a spencer wig, and a silver hilted hanger.
1753. Hogarth, Anal. Beauty, xvi. 218. The uniform ‘diamond’ of a card was filled up by the flying dress … of the little capering figure in the spencer-wig.
2. A short double-breasted overcoat without tails worn by men in the latter part of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th.
Hence G. spencer, spenser, now spenzer, WFlem. spensel.
1796. Sporting Mag., VII. 311. The economical garment called a spencer.
1817. J. Bradbury, Trav. Amer., 126. This occasioned … on my part a pretended alarm for fear that his coat should become a spencer.
1853. Dickens, Bleak Ho., xxiv. A very respectable old gentleman,… dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat.
1899. C. K. Paul, Memories, 81. He [Bethell] was the last man who wore a ‘spencer,’ an over-jacket, which allowed the tails of a what we now call a dress coat … to appear below it.
b. A kind of close-fitting jacket or bodice commonly worn by women and children early in the 19th century, and since revived.
1803. Wittman, Trav. Turkey, 442. They wear a kind of short spencer of green silk or satin.
1836–7. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Scenes, xiv. There was a considerable talking among the females in the spencers.
1885. Lady Brassey, The Trades, 69. The women were mostly dressed in … some sort of dark jacket or spencer.
attrib. 1883. Cassell’s Mag., Dec., 43/2. A resuscitation is the Spencer bodice, as much like those of forty years ago as can be.
c. A short coat or jacket.
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunt., I. xx. 259. Some wore leathern calzoneros, with a spencer or jerkin of the same material.
1879. Stevenson, Trav. Cévennes (1886), 10. My travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot-coat, and knitted spencer.
3. A form of life-belt.
1803. Phil. Mag., XVI. 172. Account of the Marine Spencer for the Preservation of Lives in Cases of Shipwreck.
1806. Ann. Reg., Usef. Proj. (1808), 980/2. Swimming spencers, which consist of a cork girdle.
4. slang. (See quot.)
1804. Sporting Mag., XXIII. 220. A small glass of gin in St. Giles’s [is called] a Spencer.
