Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. UK Und.) to eat or drink, esp. noisily or greedily.

1754		G. Stevens ‘A Cant Song’ Muses Delight 177: And away we went to the ken boozie. / As there we sat yaffling and sluicing our gobs, / She tipt me the gum very cleanly.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1907		Gem 16 Mar. 15: If you yaffle up that lot.
1920		Marvel 10 July 5: You are not going to make me believe he could have yaffled up the crop of an orchard of large trees.
1922		‘J.H. Ross’ Mint (1955) 36: You bloody swaddies can’t half yaffle [...] Chuck’s that bread.
1984		(con. WW2) T. Jones Heart of Oak [ebook] There I was to learn to yaffle train smash and pavement pounder.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 29: In tassie they have some quaintly appealing words like a yaffler for someone who talks too much and too loudly (probably from the 18th-century convict cant ‘yaffle’, to eat).