Green’s Dictionary of Slang

an enthusiast, usu. for ‘pleasures of the flesh’, e.g. pussy-hound under pussy n., saucehound under sauce n.¹

1914		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 14: I know where you are — You’re in that saloon across from the station [...] with a lot of ale hounds.
1916		Hall & Niles One Man’s War (1929) 168: Lufbery is a mushroom hound.
1917		E. Ferber ‘The Gay Old Dog’ in One Basket (1947) 11: The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district [...] And he who frequents it at night in search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound.
1919		A. Baer Two and Three 20 Mar. [synd. col.] Rumhounds will fight to the last ditch. Why not the last gutter?
1920		H.C. Witwer Kid Scanlon 289: He was a Saturday night ale-hound.
1922		(con. 1918–19) S.V. Benét Beginning of Wisdom 295: He was indefatigable at bumming cigarettes [...] The habit had once settled upon him the nick-name of ‘Fag Hound’.
1926		J. Tully Jarnegan (1928) 104: I know they’re fakers – and money hounds.
1927		(con. 1920s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 412: I don’t like being hired to praise burglars and gamblers and respectable loan-sharks and food-hounds like Henry Semp.
1927		E. Wallace Squeaker (1950) 49: A worthy crime-hound!
1929		L. Bogan ‘Pot Hound Blues’ 🎵 You’s a dirty pot-hound.
1936		(ref. to 1918) L. Duncan Over the Wall 21: I saw and became familiar with [...] paragoric hounds, laudenum fiends.
1938		Curtis Jones ‘Reefer Hound Blues’ 🎵 I’m high off my reefer, I’m nothing but a reefer hound.
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 126: Had to fight me way through a pack of beer-hounds.
1942		Whizzbang Comics 16: We shall make fools of ourselves in front of that old cake-hound.
1942		R.L. Bellem ‘Drunk, Disorderly & Dead’ Dan Turner — Hollywood Detective Apr.🌐 A lady lenshound from the Hollywood Citadel-News exploded a flash bulb to snap a shot.
1944		R.L. Bellem ‘Murder’s Mouthpiece’ Hollywood Detective Aug. 🌐 In this case the wolves were jive hounds—members of Wardman’s former orchestra.
1945		‘Campus Sl. at Minnesota’ in AS XX:3 Oct. 233/1: Her gerund grinder is known as the Ph.D. demon or comma hound.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 159: These credit-hounds always try to revise your script at least eighty per cent.
1949		R. Chandler Little Sister 101: An amateur camera hound [...] would have been thrown out.
1949		L. Glassop Lucky Palmer 3: You’re only a lot of beer hounds anyway.
1950		S. Murphy Stone Mad (1966) 78: You can tell her from me that I never wanted to look like a chapel-hound and that she needn’t fret herself about my soul.
1958		E. Dundy Dud Avocado (1960) 188: I’m a real celebrity-hound.
1959		J. Thompson Getaway in Four Novels (1983) 74: Some eager beaver of a lab hound had managed to raise a latent print on the man’s corpse.
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 102: Dagga [...] was being used in increasing measure by young men, known as ‘jazz hounds’ and ‘lounge lizards’.
1968		G. Cuomo Among Thieves 308: Preston, who was a great chow hound.
1976		(con. 1940s) J. Wolveridge Ain’t it Grand 92: Walter was a culture hound, and he used to lug me off to museums.
2000		F. Kellerman Stalker (2001) 407: There’s Lopez’s partner, Tim Waters, who’s a big pussy hound.
2007		J. Stahl ‘Pure’ in Love Without 169: Rapture-hounds didn’t pretend to be righteous.
2011		D.R. Pollock Devil All the Time 173: [H]er arms wrapped around the whore hound’s neck.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 10: Lesbians are ‘beefcake butches.’ Drunks are ‘bibulous bottle hounds’.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 33: Wayward wives and whorehound hubbies.