[Parasynthetic f. ten pound(s + -ER1.]
1. a. A thing (e.g., a ball, a fish) weighing ten pounds; spec. a fish, Elops saurus, about three feet long, inhabiting the warmer parts of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans; also called Big-eyed Herring. b. A cannon throwing a ten-pound shot.
1695. Lond. Gaz., No. 3112/3. 69 Pieces of Cannon,… viz. … 9 ten Pounders.
1699. Dampier, Voy., II. II. 71. Tenpounders are shaped like Mullets, but are so full of very small stiff Bones … that you can hardly eat them.
1812. Nav. Chron., 433. Captured off Ushant, the Emelie French privateer, of St. Maloes, carrying twelve ten-pounder carronades, and eighty-four men.
1888. Goode, Amer. Fishes, 407. The ‘Big-eyed Herring’ or ‘Ten-pounder,’ Elops saurus.
2. Something of the value of, or rated at, ten pounds. a. A ten-pound note. b. A voter in a borough who was enfranchised in virtue of occupying property of the annual value of ten pounds.
1755. Johnson, s.v. Pounder, A note or bill is called a twenty pounder or ten pounder.
1829. Marryat, F. Mildmay, iv. I pocketed the little donation—it was a ten-pounder.
1834. Oxford Univ. Mag., I. 46. No candidate would venture to present himself before a body of ten-pounders.
1880. Disraeli, Endym., xvii. There were several old boroughs where the freemen still outnumbered the ten-pounders.
Hence Ten-poundery nonce-wd., the body of ten-pound householders.
1840. Fraser’s Mag., XXI. 237. He was hanged to oblige the tenpoundery of the day.
