Obs. exc. arch. [Alteration of SPELLER3.] A branchlet on a deer’s horn.
1590. Cokaine, Treat. Hunting, D j. Some [bucks] … are plaine palmed without any aduauncers, with long spillers out behinde.
1660. Howell, Parly of Beasts, 62. Such silly coxcombs … deserve to wear such branch’d horns, such spilters [sic] and trochings on their heads, as that goodly Stagg bears.
1727. Bailey (vol. II.), Spillers, the small Branches shooting out from the flat Parts of a Buck’s Horn at the Top.
1827. Griffith, trans. Cuvier, IV. 85. Additional advancers and spillers, or snags on the anterior or posterior parts of the palm.
1864. Reader, 23 Jan., 112/3. The spillers into which the palm divides were directed exteriorly, as in the reindeer and the fallow-deer.
