A drinking frolic. Ramsay (1728) and Tannahill (1810) use the word as meaning a hard drinker. (N.E.D.)
1846. A diabolic curvature, or bender, as the initiated call it, (a sin of commission).—Yale Lit. Mag., xi. 278 (June).
1857. She had retained such refreshing simplicity as … to merely associate the idea of some flexible substance with “bender,” and to consider a work of art alone suggested by “bust.”—T. B. Gunn, ‘New York Boarding-houses,’ p. 174.
1860. Senator Wigfall on a bender.—Headline, Oregon Argus, June 23.
1888. He was a character noted for going on frequent benders.—Detroit Free Press, Aug. 4 (Farmer).
