Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. wonderful, very enjoyable.

1834		W.A. Caruthers Kentuckian in N.Y. I 101: They always wind up at the little end with a rip-sneezin dance.
1846		Yale Literary Mag. XI 336: What a rip-snorting red head you have got! [DA].
1868		Charleston Dly News (SC) 12 Aug. 4/1: It must be a furious, fiery [...] rip-snorting [...] pitching in.
1874		J.H. Carter ‘Our Member From Duck Creek Settlement’ in Log of Commodore Rollingpin 219: An’ right on the primises immijately he / Commenced fer to print a rip-snortin’ daily.
1888		Salt Lake Herald (UH) 18 Mar. 2/3: Oh! Great rip-snorting Scott!
1899		J. Flynt Tramping with Tramps 367: We had a rip-snortin’ time – drunk ev’ry day.
c.1900		‘The Festive Lumber-Jack’ in F. Rickaby Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (1926) 97: He’s a wild rip-snortin’ devil ever’ time he comes to town.
1906		J.W. Carr ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in DN III:iii 153: rip-staving, adj. Enjoyable, exceedingly good. ‘We had a rip-staving time.’.
1910		O. Johnson Varmint 128: You’n I and the Tennessee Shad could strike up a combine and get out a rip-snorting [...] newspaper.
1914		Clay City Times (KY) 3 Dec. 4/2: One of the most red-hot, rip-snorting, high-geared, trip[le action, chain lightning editors you ever read.
1921		Wodehouse Indiscretions of Archie Ch. vii: If I’ve suggested one rip-snorting stunt, I’ve suggested twenty, and every time she turns them down.
1931		Ade Old-Time Saloon 15: The whole present situation is most confusing to some of us who knew the old rip-snorting and ruffianly Chicago.
1940		E. Curry Hysterical Hist. of Aus. 26: What a universe-shaking, rip-snorting, hell-busting event the transit of Venus is.
1949		I.L. Idriess One Wet Season 75: From out in the road came a rip-snorting yell.
1952		Life 6 Oct. 150/2: Toss in anything picturesque you can imagine ... like a ripsnorting bullfiht in Madrid.
1959		Daily Mail 17 Feb. 4/5: The Count Basie riff-number Alright, Okay, You Win, with ripsnorting backing [OED].
1961		F & A Woodford Father Abraham’s Children 53: They were a ripsnorting, hell-for-leather outfit.
1970		N.Y. Mag. 25 May 61: A ripsnorting he-man war-adventure movie.
1982		Ebony Apr. 105/1: This Southern city where backslapping, ‘good old boys’ and words like ‘ripsnorting’ are common.
1990		C. Ricks (ed.) State of Lang. 85: Australians ([...] have created a national linguistic mythology that now distinctly spurns the English of the poms and celebrates a ripsnorting English with which parallels are frequently drawn to the more boisterous days.

2. excessive, uncontrollable.

1942		R.L. Bellem ‘Color of Murder’ Dan Turner – Hollywood Detective Dec. 🌐 He was too unreliable; was always going on rip-snorting benders.
1963		Brief Case 12 19: On the night of January 31, despite a ripsnorting storm (and we do mean ripsnorting) [etc.].