Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also booser) a drunkard; a heavy drinker; thus attrib.

1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 138: With whom came muzzy Tom, / And sneaking Snip, the boozer, / Bag-picking, blear-ey’d Ciss, / And squinting Jack, the bruiser.
1801		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Orson & Ellen’ Works (1801) V 340: The Landlord was a boozer stout.
1830		J. Galt Lawrie Todd I Pt II 92: He was an almighty boozer.
1846–48		Thackeray Book of Snobs (1889) 142: The quantity of brandy-and-water that Jack took showed what a regular boozer he was.
1855		Hereford Times 6 Oct. 11: There is no indication that the Prussian ‘boozer’ entertains sentiments of a different kind.
1869		J.C. Parkinson Places and People 91: White-faced, staggering boozers, whose crumpled dirty looks tells one pretty plain they’ve had a stiff night’s drinking bout.
1879		London Life 2 Aug. 7/1: We have [...] big boozers in every class of society.
1885		B. Patterson Life in the Ranks 43: The doors are then closed until five o’clock in the evening, from which hour the ‘boosers’ can revel away to their hearts’ content.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 13/4: [A] box of [sulfur matches] went off in a boozer’s pocket. His remark, on feeling and smelling the case, was: ‘By crimes! In H— already!’ He was fined five peg.
1888		J. Runciman Chequers 178: When I hear [...] some flabby boozer whining and ascribing his trouble to the drinkshop, I despise him.
1893		W. Tilbury ‘The Nipper’s Reply!’ 🎵 Then off the old ’un goes, upon the booze. The old ’un is a champion, as a ‘boozer’ ’e’s a ‘knockout’.
1893		H. Lawson ‘Macquarie’s Mate’ in Roderick (1972) 122: The boozer swung his back to the bar [...] and looked vacantly out of the door.
1896		F. Hutcheson Barkeep Stories 41: [D]em boozers an’ hobos round here dat don’t hardly knows w’at’s de diff’rence between de stars an’ stripes an’ any odder flag.
1900		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘His Artfulness’ Sporting Times 22 Sept. 1/4: A nice thing to be a boozer’s wife, that’s my fate, I can see.
1902		‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 3 Aug. 1/6: ‘Ther children of Israel was boozers’.
1908		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 Jan. 4/7: The battered old boozer was assuring a leading business man [...] that he really wanted the oney for a meal.
1911		J. Masefield Everlasting Mercy 59: Her Jimmy’s out again, / In Market-place, with boozer Kane.
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 21 Feb. 10/1: East Moonta young Boosers on the warpath again Saturday night, opening the hotel bar doors and taking a sniff — got knocked out.
1920		S. Lewis Main Street (1921) 221: It’s about a young man in college who gets in with a lot of free-thinkers and boozers and everything.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 78: Otherwise they’d have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink.
1933		Sun. Times (Perth) 20 May 45/9: Will we, who interpret you, Sousa, / Be expected to learn chucking-out, / To wooden the beer-chewing booser / With a smack on the shickersome snout?
1938		G. Kersh Night and the City 76: The sodden nausea of the drunkard’s dawn; heavy blue boozers’ gloom; the sickness of stale air.
1943		R. Chandler Lady in the Lake (1952) 184: He might be a muddy-faced boozer [...] The police think he’s a murderer too.
1950		C. Harris Three-Ha’Pence to the Angel 79: Don’t ’e look an old boozer?
1954		J. Sanders Freak Show 83: ‘Let’s all have a toast to my wife’s new abil . . . abil . . . ability as a boozer’.
1964		H.S. Thompson letter 19 Aug. in Proud Highway (1997) 463: Our man in the West is a foaming anarchist, a naked boozer who never sleeps.
1973		in C. Browne Body Shop 69: I’d rather have nine potheads than one boozer.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 138: The quartet of bossed boozers acted as if they might raise an objection.
1991		D. Widgery Some Lives! 97: A boozer with ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ tattoed on knuckles.
2000		Indep. Rev. 22 Jan. 3: The stereotype of the Irish as boozers and brawlers.
2010		K. Richards Life 14: This is the ’70s and boozers are not dopeheads.
2013		D. Whish-Wilson Zero at the Bone [ebook] The boozer’s trifecta, old mate. Emphysema and lung cancer, some pretty bad cirrhosis in my liver.
2017		M. Forsyth Short History of Drunkenness n.p.: The head of [Peter the Great’s] secret police [...] was a boozer and an enforcer of boozing.
2023		F. Bill Back to the Dirt 140: [T]he blue-collar types [...] don’t have a chance between the oxycodone, methamphetamine, and heroin, and that’s on top of the boozers .
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 180: Indistinguishable boozer faces, menacing faces, [...] bared buck-teeth, gat-teethed, brown-teethed, piggy eyes.

2. (also oozer) a public house or bar.

1895		Derby Mercury 9 Jan. 8/3: Big Tim goes with him, while I pops around (stays) at the boozer (public house).
1904		Illus. Police News 31 Dec. 11/3: I was outside the ‘boozer’ (public-house) when they ‘touched’ (took the chain).
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 163: Don’t come hot-step out of a boozer an’ reckon as cloves is goin’ to give you a odour o’ sanctity.
1919		C.H. Thorp Handful of Ausseys 200: We all went an’ ’ad a drink, — the boozers was just opened.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 32: We had some tea [...] and passed the time until the boozers had opened.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 74: The cheerful red glow from behind the blinds in the still-open boozers.
1943		Mass-Observation Report on Juvenile Drinking 8: ‘No, I can’t be bothered to go hanging round the boozer.’ (Boy, 17, Fulham).
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 257: [He could] be over in the boozer drinking a pint before dinner-time.
1960		C. MacInnes Mr Love and Justice (1964) 100: He came into a boozer [...] where I was partaking of a dram.
1970		R. Fabian Anatomy of Crime 192: We went into an oozer (boozer:pub) for a pen and ink (drink).
1975		Sun. Times Mag. 12 Oct. 25: He [...] stayed in the boozer each night with the lads.
1984		Benjamin & Pearl Limericks Down Under 29: Some boozers in old Hartley Vale / Brewed some very fine ale.
1984		A. Sayle Train to Hell 127: The pubs open early in the morning for the meat porters, so you can usually get a drink in a boozer.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 18: Wallington’s Hotel, a single-storey boozer a couple of streets up from George Street in the formidable Rocks area.
1998		I. Welsh Filth 112: I [...] think about calling in at Alan Anderson’s old boozer in Infirmary Street.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 15: I spoke to Mister Mortimer like it was the most natural thing in the whole wide world that he should be ringing me in this out-of-the-way boozer.
2009		L. McIlvanney All the Colours 113: The Crown Liquor Saloon. The one Belfast boozer that everyone knows.
2012		R. Milward Kimberly’s Capital Punishment (2023) 230: I scan the length of Uxbridge Road for a decent boozer.
2015		I. Welsh Decent Ride 16: See yis back at the boozer for a scoop.
2020		G. Armstrong Young Team 38: An eld boozer [...] yir typical Scottish pub.