Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a large, heavy meal.

1843		Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 4 Feb. 2/1: The worthy member [...] was observed taking what is termed a ‘tightener’ at an oyster stall.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 148: They are all busy down below cooking up the vittels; Oh my eyes, such a tightener!
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 71: They took their tightener, – viz., a bag of brown lap, a brace of pickled deserters, a dab of smeerums, a nob o’pannum, a wedge of beeswax, and a go of blue, which they copped on the cross of the slavey donna.
1849		Bell’s Life in Sydney 17 Feb. 3/1: If Mir Mottram had not bin so werry impeterous that splendaclous tightner would have bin paid for.
1856		Bell’s Life in Sydney 12 Jan. 3/1: [He] has heen in the habit of dropping into take ‘pot luck’ with Mrs Lees, when the state of his exchequer rendered it problematical whether he could obtain ‘a tightener’ elsewhere.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 109: TIGHTNER, a dinner, or hearty meal.
1868		Melbourne Punch 12 Mar. 88/1: She alludes to meals as a ‘feed,’ and I think I once heard her speak of a dinner as a ‘blow-out,’ and a supper as a ‘tightener’.
1880		Leicester Chron. 4 Sept. 9/6: It’s worth doing fourteen days to get the Christmas dinner they gets here. It’s a regular tightener.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 27 June 10/2: The mate murmured something about going on together, and chopping wood for a tightener, but the parson wouldn’t hear of it.
1890		Dead Bird (Sydney) 15 Feb. 2/4: There lives not the man whose remembrances of the deceased founder of that feast will not be mellowed and perpetuated by association with a jolly good skin-tightener.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 109: I didn’t feel over and above grand through havin’ had a tightener the night before.
1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 40: Two eggs and chips is a lousy tightener when you’re good and hungry. Have a plate of spaghetti.
1948		J. O’Connor Come Day – Go Day (1984) 10: Many’s the time he had seen the two of them over in her house, drinking her aleplant, and sitting down to a tightener of potatoes and brown-gravy.
1950		S. Murphy Stone Mad (1966) 14: Ye can’t beat a good tightener in the middle of the day. I’m twice the man after a feed.
1950		P. Hoskins No Hiding Place! 192/2: Tightener. Meal.

2. (US) an alcoholic drink [it ‘tightens’ one’s brain].

1972

D. Jenkins Semi-Tough 198: ‘Get you a pop?’ Burt said to his friend. ‘Another tightener?