sooner n.
1. (also just as soon dog) a mongrel or any dog that would ‘rather feed than fight’; the same applies to cats; also attrib.
![]() | Dead Bird (Sydney) 21 Dec. 11/3: George’s faithful hound, Seldom fed — one of the celebrated Sooner breed, by the way. | |
![]() | Bulletin (Sydney) 26 July 16/1: The only dogs I’ve known drovers to be unkind to were wastrels, ‘sooner-dogs,’ not worth tucker, and such animals are annoying on the road. | |
![]() | Sun. Times (Perth) 17 Apr. 1/1: A Fremantle citizen’s sooner chewed up their canine. | |
![]() | Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 17 Feb. 1/6: [of a racehorse] A ‘sooner’: Billali. | |
![]() | Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. | |
![]() | Aus. Lang. 73: Outback slang terms for dogs include: [...] sooner (i.e. one that would sooner rest than work). | |
![]() | I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 239/1: sooner – a dog [...] who is no good. | |
![]() | Portrait of a Young Man Drowning (1963) 8: He said he’s a ‘just as soon’ dog . . . He’d just as soon eat as to sleep. | |
![]() | Notes for Gloss. of Barbadian Dial. 106: Sooner. A mongrel. On asking on one occasion why a ‘sooner’, I was told, ‘He’d sooner bark than bite’. | |
![]() | Homeboy 183: ‘What’s a sooner Catahoula?’ ‘Hound he grows only down the bayou and jist as soon as he do something, that’s how soon he be in trouble.’. | |
![]() | Irish Times 3 Nov. n.p.: The problem with our ferret was that he was spoilt or a ‘sooner’. Instead of terrifying the rabbits [...] our ferret was satisfied to catch one, dine off it and fall asleep [BS]. |
2. (Aus.) a lazy person, one who would ‘sooner’ lie around than work or, in context, fight.
![]() | ‘Hello, Soldier!’ 31: He slugged a tubby Hun, / Then choked a Fritzie with his dukes, ’n’ pinched the sooner’s gun! | ‘Bricks’ in|
![]() | Rocky Road 148: He’s a sooner, that fella [...] He’d sooner be a dirty scut than a dacent skin, any day. | |
![]() | Shipbuilders (1954) 60: Aye – the dirty sooners. | |
![]() | I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 239/1: sooner – a dog, or sometimes a person, who is no good. | |
![]() | Nobody Stops Me 23: Where’s that blasted Roxy got to. Lazy, loafing old sooner. | |
, | ![]() | see sense 9. |
3. (US) an illegitimate child [born too soon for the wedding].
![]() | Down in the Holler 286: sooner: n. A child born less than nine months after its parents’ wedding. |
4. (US Und.) one who takes things for granted; a mistaken optimist [they feel optimistic too soon].
![]() | Life In Sing Sing 261: Everything was rosy, the cush was coming strong and I was patting this ginny on the hump, but I was a sooner. |
5. (Aus.) a confidence trickster.
![]() | cited in DSUE (1984). |
6. (US black) a cheap and badly made object; a dirty and unkempt person.
![]() | Novels and Stories (1995) 1010: Sooner: anything cheap and mongrel; now applied to [...] a shabby person. | ‘Story in Harlem Sl.’ in|
![]() | ‘The Open Book’ in Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 112: A psalm singing sooner, a guitar picking crooner / and as worthless as tits on a boar. |
7. (US) a choice.
![]() | Walk on the Wild Side 175: I’d as soon not be whupped — if I got my sooners. |
8. (N.Z.) an ill-behaved, lazy horse.
![]() | Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 106/1: sooner a horse jibbing, one that would sooner go back than forward, a lazy horse – or person. | |
![]() | Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988]. |