Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a preacher, an orator.

1859		Wkly Varieties (Boston, MA) 3 Sept. 5/2: The boss ‘howler’ at the nightly fanatic meetings [...] lately getting short of wind [etc].
1861		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 5 Oct. 4/3: Allen is one of the holy howler Joy’s converts.

2. a boisterous lout.

1863		Times of India 24 Oct. 3/3: The ‘public!’ The Calcutta howlers, the second rate merchants, the gambling speculators, and semi-insolvent trading community of that filthy ditch.
1869		Paisley Herald 13 Nov. 6/4: The Nashville Banner, a strongly democratic journal, speaks of Andrew Johnson under the caption, ‘Have we a howler among us?’.
1873		Democrat & Chron. (Rochester, NY) 6 May 2/3: He is head flunkey and dirt-eater to every despicable titled thing [...] a fierce howler.
1883		Donaldsonville Chief (LA) 27 Oct. 1/3: I’m the howler from the prairies of the west, / If you want to die with terror, look at me.
1891		M.D. Landon Eli Perkins: Thirty Years of Wit 295: I’m a howler from the prairies of the West [...] I’m chain-lightning; if I ain’t, may I be blessed.
1895		‘’Arry on Harry’ in Punch 24 Aug. 90/3: You call me a ‘haitch-droppin’ howler,’ whilst you are ‘a gent’!
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 19 Oct. 3/7: If you neglect your business to go round town and buy beer for all [...] [you] are generally a low class howler.
1922		Coconino Sun (Flagstaff, AZ) 17 Nov. 3/3: [as 1883].

3. lit. or fig., a heavy fall, a bad accident; thus come/go a howler [one howls with pain].

1867		Light Blue (Cantab.) II 102: When however he does make a false step, or a miscalculation as to distance, one is pretty certain, as you say in your university slang, to go a ‘howler,’ or come to utter grief.
1875		Punch 69 136: john (generally called jack) harkaway, having come a howler over the Leger, is stumped.
1881-2		T.B. Reed Fifth Form at St Dominic’s (1890) 145: ‘I’m certain to come a howler over the Nighingale’ [i.e. a scholarship].
1886		Nottingham Eve. Post 7 Apr. 2/2: The late idol of his heart is likely, in hunting phrase, to ‘come a howler’.
1890		Sporting Times 22 Mar. 1/5: If we back a horse it’s sure to come down a howler.
1940		M. Marples Public School Slang 100: A character in Eden Phillpotts’ ‘The Human Boy’ (1899) defines the then current usage neatly: ‘A howler, of course, is the same as a cropper, and you can come one at cricket or football or in class or in everyday life.’ .

4. (US) a complainer.

1882

Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 6 May 3/3: The boss howler against the ticket-speculating fraud in New York is manager Henderson.

5. an expert.

1885

Bulletin (Sydney) 1 Aug. 14/1: Donald Dinnie’s admirers have been rushing into print to contradict certain estimates of the Scot’s mental powers [...]. It is refreshing to find that Donald is a ‘howler’ at Latin grammar, and can build a bridge. We always thought there was something intellectual about Donald, especially as regards his legs.

6. a notable blunder (esp. in an examination), a gross error, a social solecism [such errors ‘howl out’ for notice].

1885		Daily News 16 May 4/8: The translators of the Bible constantly made what undergraduates call howlers, or grievously impossible blunders [F&H].
1895		Gloucester Citizen 14 Nov. 4/6: [headline] A Schoolboy ‘Howler’.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 31 Jan. 8/2: In all innocence and good faith, he perpetrated a shocking ‘howler’.
1908		Farmer Note-Book & Word-List in Five Anon. Plays 302: We have collated and collated [...] only to find ‘howlers’ in the printed sheet.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 1 May 2nd sect. 9/1: They Say [...] That the social column of a contemporary is now being closely watched. That the recent howlers are not to be repeated.
1916		E. Pound letter 3 Mar. in Paige (1971) 71: I thought the standard of criticism in the number good, and without the howlers that so often annoy me.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 602: The usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.
1938		J.B. Booth Sporting Times 119: Connie Gilchrist — the ‘who is Connie Gilchrist?’ of the famous judicial howler.
1940		M. Marples Public School Slang 100: howler: [...] a gross blunder achieving by accident (or in many cases no doubt by design) some unexpected absurdity.
1951		G. Legman letter in AS XXVI:2 135: With the addition of a few howlers.
1992		Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore I 414: See further on Partridge’s superb howlers, in both his dictionaries of slang, [...] in my article ‘The Cant Of Lexicography,’ answering his ‘The Lexicography of Cant,’ in American Speech (1951).
2000		Indep. Rev. 3 Mar. 1: The handbook’s many schoolboy howlers [...] can still produce a smile.

7. a dandy, a fop, a fashionable dresser [his clothes and personality ‘howl’ for attention].

1890		Sporting Times 22 Mar. 1/2: The Albert Club was besieged by a seething mob of howlers anxious to have a bit on the coincidence.
1896		Edinburgh Eve. News 11 June 2/4: A gang of roughs [...] singing [...] Fowler, Fowler, Fowler / Wasn’t he a howler!
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Aug. 35/2: Tom don’t want them pot-hatted coots to get past the brace nohow. [...] Everythink’s in a mess, and there aint been no carpets laid along the drives for them howlers to walk on, nor nothink.

8. a failure.

1914

Day Book (Chicago) 8 July 7/2: If he has more tears to shed, let the standpat howler prepare to shed them.

9. (US) an automobile horn.

1930

Oakland Trib. (CA) 3 Mar. 6/4: We hung him and crashed into the covered wagon. We let out one squeeze on the howler then perambulated to the paternal abode.

10. a great success.

1960

(con. 1930s) R. Barber Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968) 263: The first act of the show was a howler. [...] The company was called back so many times after the finale that Tom Blundy was obliged to make a curtain speech.