panter, n.¹ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

panter n.¹

[the line ‘As pants the hart for cooling streams / When heated in the chase’ (Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, New Version of the Psalms, 1696); ult. f. Ps. 42:1, ‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks so panteth my soul after thee, O God’. The pun indicates, as does B.E., that sense 1 is the general use. However, Grose (1785) cites ‘the animal’ and in 1796 adds ‘the human heart, which temporarily pants in times of danger’ ]

1. the human heart.

1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn).
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Panter a Heart.
1725		‘Retoure My Dear Dell’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 44: Didst thou know, my dear doxy, but half of the smart / Which has seized on my panter, since thou didst depart.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
c.1750–1882		B.M. Carew Life and Adventures.
1754		Scoundrel’s Dict. 17: Heart – Panter.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict. 24: Panter, heat [sic].
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open [as cit. 1835].
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 63: panter The heart. ‘The lead reached the poor cove’s panter, and so there was nothing to be done but to give him a ground sweat,’ the bullet entered the poor fellow’s heart, and all that we had then to do was to put him in the grave.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 56: Panter, the heart.

2. (UK Und.) a hart or male deer.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

panter n.1

panter n.¹