1. A speaker or preacher who for emphasis thumps the pulpit; a violent or declamatory preacher or orator; a ranter.
1662. H. Foulis, Hist. Plots Pretended Saints, 80. Tub-thumpers … a sort of people more antick in their Devotions than Don Buscos Fencing-Master.
1720–1. Lett. fr. Mist’s Jrnl. (1722), II. 225. An honest Presbyterian Tub-thumper, who has lost his Voice with bawling to his Flock.
1864. Athenæum, 27 Aug., 267/3. Preachers, humorous tub-thumpers.
1908. Daily Chron., 3 Nov., 5/7. It would reduce the M.P. … to the position of a Temperance tub-thumper.
2. A cooper. humorous dial.
1872. Hartley, Yorks. Ditties, Ser. I. 98. At last au set up as tub-thumper.
1880. L. J. Jennings, Rambles, 110. ‘A tub-thumper?’… ‘Ay Mister—what you call a cooper.’
So Tub-thumping sb. and a.
1888. Contemp. Rev., Aug., 253. Very modest gifts, belonging to what may be called the tub-thumping school of oratory.
1894. Westm. Gaz., 22 Aug., 1/2. What we demand is not a display of tub-thumping at the fag-end of a Session,… but a deliberate plan of campaign, carefully thought out and doggedly pursued.
1909. Times, 21 March. A democratic election, with all its tub-thumping and unreasoning passion and sheer noise.
