Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) an impressive person, usu. physically aggressive; occas. an impressive thing.

1830		Painesville (OH) Tel. 15 June 1/5: Ringtailed Roarers—A most violent fellow, a Crockett [DA].
1834		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) Sept. 6 n.p.: She [The Gallinipper, a fire engine] belongs to the ‘Mosquito Fleet’ and a ring tail snorter.
1837		R.M. Bird Nick of the Woods I 72: Stranger, my name’s Ralph Stackpole, and I’m a ring-tailed squealer!
1838		‘Uncle Sam’s Peculiarities’ Bentley’s Misc. IV 135: A Kentucky horse-dealer and general merchant, or, as he called himself, a ring-tailed roarer and screamer.
1843–44		Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit (1995) 356: P’raps he was a loafin’ rowdy; p’raps a ring-tailed roarer.
1845		‘Fight with Snapping Turtle’ in Martin & Aytoun Bon Gaultier Ballads 60: You’re the ring-tailed squealer!
1853		T. Haliburton Sam Slick’s Wise Saws I 322: I hope there will be a ripper there, a regular ring-tailed roarer.
1859		La Crosse Daily Union 25 Oct. 2/4: Here lies James D. Potter, Who lived [...] as a Methodist Exhorter, With a regular ring-tail snorter [DA].
1860		Red Wing Sentinel (MN) 18 Apr. 6/1: Here lies James D. Porter / Who lived as he hadn’t orter / But as a Methodist exhorter / Was a regular ringtail snorter.
1867		J. Scott Partisan Life 196: Holloah, Mister Nigger, give us the ‘Ring-tailed Roarer!’.
1870		Nashville Union & American (TN) 22 May 1/4: I asked myself can this be the fearful ring-rail snorter of the Senate.
1871		White Cloud Kansas Chief (KS) 17 Aug. 1/3: Same to you Sim Roberts! to you, Jimmy Big-nose! [...] Ar’n’t I a ring-tailed squealer?
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 224: A specially fine fellow of great size and strength is called a ring-tailed roarer.
1877		E.L. Wheeler Deadwood Dick in Beadle’s Half Dime Library I:1 83/3: By all the roarin’, screechin’, shriekin’, yowlin’, squawkin’, ringtailed, flat-futted cattymounts that ever did their forest aisles o’ old Alaska traverse!, you here, ye infernal smooth-faced varmint?
1884		Columbus Jrnl (NE) 24 Dec. 4/5: Stealing up through the sheltering cornbush [...] comes the ring-tail peer.
1884		E. Nye Baled Hay 134: A regular old ring-tail peeler of an editorial.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Aug. 6/1: ‘Jim’ was a ‘ring-tailed roarer’ in those old days, and wherever billeted in what old Dr. Bromby calls ‘the world beyond the grave’ [...] can be safely trusted to keep things about him in a state of constant liveliness.
1893		Colfax Chron. (Grant Parish, LA) 18 Feb. 1/3: Anything seems to be grist that comes to the mill of our latter day ring-tailed squealers.
1896		Anaconda Standard (MT) 7 May 11/2: he is a daisy; crack-a-jack; a rip-snorter; the ring-tailed tooter of Choteau.
1897		Kansas City Jrnl (MO) 7 June 2/1: We thought at first that the ‘reform party’ was a ring-tailed snorter.
1898		F.B. Lloyd in Hudson Humor of the Old Deep South (1936) 197: I made a stavin, stirrin speech. It must of been a ring-tail dick nailer, for the crowd was all with me at the finish.
1898		A.J. Boyd Shellback 24: On board a Yankee ship he must be a regular ‘ring-tailed roarer’.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 24 Jan. 4/5: What a ring-tailed squealer among statisticians is this somnolent scion of a yawning clan.
1907		W.M. Raine Wyoming (1908) 74: ‘You’re a fine pair of ring-tailed snorters, ain’t y’u?’ jeered the foreman.
1907		Brisbane Courier 29 May 6/3: ‘Bobby dazzler,’ ‘ripsnorter,’ and ‘ringtailed snorter’ [...] have been replaced [...] by the universal use of ‘boshter’.
1908		Wash. Herald (DC) 19 Jan. 12/5: Lime Peterson had a ringtail peeler of an earache Saturday night.
1909		E. Rye Quirt and the Spur 81: Ain’t he a ‘ring-tail tooter’ boys? [DA].
1913		Sat. Eve. Post 1 Nov. 66/4: Scotty always said that when he got the dough from his old man’s estate he was going to have a ring-tail-peeler of a time [DA].
1916		Amer. Mag. Sept. 21/1: The man that pulls his cork will sure be some ring-tailed peeler! [DA].
1917		Wash. Herald (DC) 22 Feb. 6/5: A full grown, ferocious looking, ugly, ringtailed snorter of a bulldog .
1919		Princeton Union (MN) 23 Oct. 2/4: He’s a roaring, ring-tailed tooter and the terror of the pike.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl. 44: ringtailed roarer. Braggart, blowhard.
1934		(con. 1880s) E. Cunningham Triggernometry (1957) 216: Hell! he was a ring-tail’ whizzer with red striped wheels!
1944		W. Blair Tall Tale America 2: Christopher didn’t care a snippet whether ringtailed roarers like Mike Fink and John Henry [...] had a country to be heroes of.
1947		D. Davin For the Rest of Our Lives 51: Did you see the ringtailed snorter old Shorty got hold of?
1947		F. Brown Fabulous Clipjoint (1949) 144: I think he’s holding something back, but I don’t know what it is. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised, Ed, if he’s running a ring-tailed whizzer on us. But I can’t figure where.
1957		(con. 1943) A. Myrer Big War 8: Man, I’m a ring-tailed tiger all over town. I’m a terror.
1966		G. & K. Swarthout Whichaway (1967) 60: Whenever he thought about Beans’ story [...] he had to laugh. It was a ringtail snorter. It was a double-barrelled whopper.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 237: The frontier braggart’s rootin’-tootin’, high-falutin’ ‘half-horse, half-alligator’ ringtailed rhetoric is in decline.

2. a new recruit [? used ironically].

1901

Paducah Sun (KY) 14 Jan. 1/3: A ‘shave-tail’ is a ‘griffin’ [...] and known even more widely as a ‘ring-tailed snorter’ [...] terms of reproach addressed to the ‘rookie’.