Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a flashy prostitute.

1730		C. Dibdin Sea Songs ‘Old Cunwell the Pilot.’ n.p.: My Poll, once a dasher, now turned to a nurse [F&H].
1832		in Egan Bk of Sports 101: Old Poll, once a dasher, now turn’d to a nurse.
1836		Comic Almanack Feb. 47: Come, buffers and duffers, and dashers and smashers.
1866		H.L. Williams N.-Y. After Dark 29: If that ain’t that dasher we saw on the road last Sunday.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

2. a smart young person, keen on parties and socializing.

1792		Diary, or Loudon’s Register 29 Mar. 2/1: In the evening never walk straight along the footways but go in a zig-zag direction. This will make some people believe you have been dashing down your three bottles after dinner – No dasher comes home sober.
1803		N.-Y. Eve. Post 19 May 3/1: The livery stable keeper told a laughable anecdote to a gentleman present, of a young Dasher who came to his stable in the same way last year and left a horse and gig [etc.].
1817		M. Edgeworth Love and Law I i: Oh the boy of Ball’navogue! / Oh the dasher! oh the rogue!
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London II 383: A market’s the circle for frolic and glee, / Where tastes of all kinds may be suited; / The dasher, the quiz, and the ‘up to all’—he, / Pluck sprees from the plants in it rooted.
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford II 88: ‘Ah! they seem real dashers!’ ‘Dashers!’ repeated Mauleverer; ‘true, haberdashers!’.
1834		Albany Microscope (NY) 17 May n.p.: Doctor.— I have a good many friends [...] among the dashers.
1843–4		Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit (1995) 460: Why, you look smarter by day [...] than you do by candle-light. I never seen such a tight young dasher.
1866		H.L. Williams N.-Y. After Dark 46: In his wake, comes the would-be dasher. Some fancy clerk who works so hard.
1879		‘’Arry on the Rail’ in Punch 13 Sept. 109/2: She swears if there’s a gay dasher, it’s Yours as per usual, ’Arry.
1879		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 56: [T]his time, my, dasher, we’ll go at them ourselves.
1888		‘’Arry on Competitive Examination’ in Punch 1 Dec. 253/2: To be worried ’arf out of our senses — us dashers — by dollops of cram.
1900		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘You Can’t Go By Looks’ Sporting Times 31 Mar. 1/4: You can’t go by looks, look at Biffy, the masher, / You would think ’im a out-and-out sooper-fine dasher / If you looked at ’is ’owlin’ get-up.
1958		Willans & Searle Complete Molesworth (1985) 393: The dasher of the palais.

3. a ‘fast’ young woman.

1801		M. Edgeworth Belinda (1994) 25: She took courage, rouged her up, and set her a going as a dasher.
1825		C.M. Westmacott Eng. Spy I 190: For cabriolets she’s the dame, / A dasher, on my life.
1851		R.S. Surtees Young Tom Hall (1926) 324: She would have backed herself at ten to one to be a countess. What a dasher she would be.
1856		M. Edgeworth Almeria 292: She was astonished to find in high life a degree of vulgarity of which her country companions would have been ashamed: but all such things in high life go under the general term dashing. These young ladies were dashers [F&H].
1866		H.L. Williams N.-Y. After Dark 11: Next, a perfect dasher.
1877		H. Hartigan Stray Leaves (1st ser.) 93: ‘[A]nd she the finest girl in the north-west.’ ‘Is she railly now? [...] av she’s a dasher, I wont mind so muc’h.
1893		‘’Arriet on Labour’ in Punch 26 Aug. 88/1: A long of quantities of pluck, and being such a dasher.
1960		Wodehouse Jeeves in the Offing 111: The female sex [is divided] into dashers and dormice.

4. a thief who poses as a member of the upper classes.

1848

Era (London) 12 Nov. 8/3: [O]ur fighting contributor [...] has thus poetically classed them:- [...] copemen (l7) and dashers (18).

5. used on an object, first-rate, fashionable, smart.

1862

Illus. Times 11 Jan. 12/2: Bonnets, while once ‘dashers’ of the first water, but now mere wrecks of satin.

6. (W.I.) a dandy.

1941

cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).

7. a womanizer.

1934

Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves 8: You can either shut yourself up in a country house [...] or you can be a dasher with the sex.

8. (Aus.) a racehorse that performs best at short, fast distances.

1996

J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 69: When the bay failed as a dasher his new New Zealand trainer, Ivan Tucker, decided to give him a go over more ground.