subs. (colloquial).—1. A heavy shower: hence, a rain of missiles.
1837. R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends, ‘The Dead Drummer.’ The lightning kept flashing, the rain too kept pouring … what I’ve heard term’d ‘a regular PELTER.’
1887. Religious Herald, 24 March. Presently, another shower came…. She shrugged up her shoulders and shut her eyes during the PELTER.
2. (colloquial).—Anything large; a WHOPPER (q.v.).
1892. MILLIKEN, ’Arry Ballads, 70, ‘’Arry on ’Arrison and the Glorious Twelfth.’ Down upon Sport, now, a PELTER.
3. (tramps’).—A whore-monger; a MUTTON-MONGER (q.v.).
4. See subs., senses 2 and 4.
5. (obsolete).—See quot.
1827. J. BARRINGTON, Personal Sketches of His Own Times (3rd ed., 1869), i. 274–5. Every family then had a case of hereditary pistols, which descended as an heir-loom … for the use of their posterity. Our family pistols, denominated PELTERS, were brass.
