snappers n.1
1. pistols; rarely in sing.; also attrib.
![]() | Description of England in Oliphant New Eng. ii 2: Amongst the new substantives are snapper (pistol) butt-end [F&H]. | |
, , | ![]() | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
![]() | Dict. Sl. and Cant. | |
![]() | Lex. Balatronicum. | |
![]() | Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
![]() | (con. 1737–9) Rookwood (1857) 53: He always carried a lute [...] along with his snappers. | |
![]() | Andrew Jackson 67: the gineral, gittin his hand loose found one of his snappers. | |
![]() | Vocabulum. | |
![]() | Term of His Natural Life (1897) 52: Once get the snapper chest, and we’re right as ninpenn’orth o’ hapence. | |
![]() | Sl. Dict. (1890). | |
![]() | Aus. Sl. Dict. 77: Snappers, firearms. |
2. (US) beans.
![]() | Recoll. Sea-Wanderer 289: There are other terms in common use in the cabin and cook's galley [...] beans are tornadoes, snappers or band of music, and bean soup is snapper soup. |
3. teeth, usu. false.
![]() | Leave it to Psmith (1993) 372: This fellow understands my snappers. | |
![]() | Laughing Gas n.p.: You shrink from entrusting your snappers to a strange dentist. | |
![]() | Und. Nights 201: Wally, half asleep, takes a swig from the mug containing the Rabbi’s snappers. | |
![]() | Hiparama of the Classics 26: A crockodile put the snappers on him and they had to knock him in a hole. | |
![]() | After You with the Pistol (1991) 283: He’d not got himself a set of dining-snappers off the National Health. | |
![]() | Guardian G2 28 Mar. 4: My generation fondly expects to go to the grave with a full set of snappers. |