Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a rank of villain [the details are unknown, presumably the 16C equivalent of a mugger: ‘Tynckers…tryfullers, turners, and trumpers, Tempters, traytoures, trauaylers, and thumpers’ (Anon., A New Interlude called Thersytes, c.1538)].

c.1538

Thersytes (1550) D ii: Tempters, traytoures, trauaylers and thumpers.

2. a coin [one thumps it on the counter or table].

1617

Fletcher Mad Lover V iv: chi.: [Takes out his purse, and shakes it.] [...] Here are thumpers, chequins, golden rogues.

3. anything, occas. anyone, notably large as to type.

1660		J. Tatham Character of the Rump in Works (1878) 287: You may call it the tail of the great dragon, and ’tis a thumper.
1701		E. Ward Revels of the Gods 11: Then Mars Cock’d his Helmet, and fill’d up a Bumper, / Ads-heart, had you Sen’t, you’d have Sworn ’twas a Thumper.
1753		Foote Taste in Works (1799) I 13: Odds me! he’s a thumper. You see [...] I bred no starvelings.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 108: Castor and Pollux, two rare thumpers / At watchmens lanthorns, whores, and bumpers.
1828		F.F. Cooper Elbow-Shakers! I iv: My eyes, if Bill saw me he’d give me such a thumper!
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford I 33: One would think a thumper makes a man richer, — ’cause why? Every man thumps!
1841		‘Norah Daly’ Dublin Comic Songster 135: Like pickled walnuts are her eyes, / Her nose is a thumper.
1856		C. Abbey diary 17 Apr. in Gosnell Before the Mast (1989) 27: The 2nd mate met him [...] with a ‘thumper’ right in the mouth & nose.
1868		Chelmsford Chron. 25 Dec. 10/4: Hast thou not seen the prosperous knave / Come down a precious thumper.
1881		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Feb. 4/4: [We] should prefer to see the advts. a little less jumbled up with the reading matter. Somebody’s advt. is slap in the middle of a ‘thumper’ on the budget.
1886		Sporting Times 27 Feb. 5/5: ‘We’ll empty a bumper, a regular thumper, / To the kindly old man in the box!’.
1933		Eve. Teleg. 19 Dec. 8/4: Arbroath [...] have a thumper of a game this week.

4. a major lie.

1711		Swift letter xxix 8 Sept. Journal to Stella (1901) 343: I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers, as I shall prove in my next.
1788		Morris et al. ‘Prophets’ Festival of Anacreon (1810) 41: They knew very well he had an excellent voice; / Said he I can’t sing, but they knew it was a thumper.
1825		W. Cobbett Big O and Sir Glory I ii: That’s a thumper, at any rate.
1838		‘Uncle Sam’s Peculiarities’ Bentley’s Misc. IV 582: You’re telling a powerful tarnation thumper, ses he.
1849		G.G. Foster N.Y. in Slices 55: Writing no Hymn to the North Star, but an appeal to Northern voters; no Thanatopsis, but a political thumper for the Evening Post.
1856		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Tales of College Life 57: That’s a thumper!
1858		Bell’s Life in Sydney 4 Dec. 3/3: Magney, the chief turnkey, toult me I had toult a thumper, and I laughed.
1869		Sportsman (London) 22 Dec. 2/1: Notes on News [...] General Cary did not say whether had ever tasted any of those rich and oily-flavoured wines; but he might well have done so. He might have given us thumper ‘when he was it’.
1873		Sl. Dict. 321: Thumper a magnificently constructed lie, a lie about which there is no stint of imaginative power.
1888		H. King Savage London 32: That’s all my eye, Willyum Davis. Don’t think yer I’ll swaller them thumpers.
1895		J. Caminada Twenty-Five Years of Detective Life I 333: He told a lot of thumpers, and spun some awful fibs.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 85: Thumper, a great lie.
1909		see sense 5.

5. (US) a dedicated liar.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 245/2: Thumper (American), Man who steals by misrepresentation – thumper being ‘a big lie.’.

6. a fist; thus a solid blow.

1734		W. Dunkin ‘The Parson’s Revels’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 210: Thus Fegan, fraught with Latin, huffs, / And Presbyter as proudly puffs, / Preparing for conclusive cuffs / Their thumpers.
1891		Hants. Teleg. 15 Aug. 12/7: He squared off and landed a thumper on the drummer’s nose.
1900		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 19 May 11/1: [He] doubtless has visions of huge bundle of gold certifcates accumulating through the medium of Grif’s [i.e. a boxer] thumpers.

7. a large or tough individual.