or belsh, subs. once literary; now vulgar.—Beer; spec. ‘small beer’: see DRINKS (B. E.). As verb. = to eructate: spec. the result of hard drinking. [The term is probably much older than indicated by quotations. One of Shakespeare’s characters in Twelfth Night is Sir Toby Belch, a reckless, roystering, jolly knight of the Elizabethan period.] Hence BELCHER = (1) a hard beer drinker; spec. one drinking to such excess that he vomits.
1598. FLORIO, A Worlde of Wordes, s.v. Rottatore, a BELCHER, a spuer, a rasper.
1698. WARD, The London Spy, xv., 347. Those Poor Sots who are gussling BELCH at his own Ale-house. Ibid. (1705). Hudibras Redivivus, I., pt. vii., 18. I sneak’d into a little house, Where porters do their BELCH carouse.
1748. T. DYCHE, A New General English Dictionary (5 ed.). BELCH (s.), common beer or ale sold in publick houses is so called.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. BELCH, all sorts of beer, that liquor being apt to cause eructation.
1858. A. MAYHEW, Paved with gold, III., iii., 265. Let’s have a pot of that fourpenny English Burgundy of yours, and, whilst my mates are drinking the BELCH, I want to told business with you.
1876. C. HINDLEY, ed. The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, 99. Now it is well-known that travelling mummers are all rare ‘BELCHERS.’
