mumper

• “According to Franicis Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a mumper was a genteel beggar.”

  Archive 2008-12-01

• “It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout.”

  Science, religion and lucre ...

• “His hutch, and that of the warren-cats his collaterals, was a long, spick-and-span new rack, a-top of which (as the mumper told us) some large stately mangers were fixed in the reverse.”

  Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel

• “Thus, said Friar John, at Seuille, the rascally beggars being one evening on a solemn holiday at supper in the spital, one bragged of having got six blancs, or twopence halfpenny; another eight liards, or twopence; a third, seven caroluses, or sixpence; but an old mumper made his vaunts of having got three testons, or five shillings.”

  Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel

• “As we entered their den, said a common mumper, to whom we had given half a teston, Worshipful culprits, God send you a good deliverance!”

  Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel

• “What an honest fellow was that same mumper who had forewarned us of all these things, and bid us take notice of the mangers above the racks!”

  Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel

• “Pity we've come such a way; it's too far to go back and proddle the auld mumper.”

  Dragonfly in Amber

• “A 'flat' or a 'mumper' may do a job to get into prison, but I never do anything unless I believe I am to escape.”

  Six Years in the Prisons of England

• “He dropped his umbrella and flung his arms three times up into the air and asked her in Romany what her name was, and if she was a mumper or a true Gypsy.”

  George Borrow The Man and His Books

• “As he knelt his great jack-boots clicked together with apprehension, and he poured forth in a piping voice, like that of a Lincoln's Inn mumper, a string of pleadings, excuses, and entreaties, as though I were Feversham in person, and was about to order him to instant execution.”

  Micah Clarke His Statement as made to his three grandchildren Joseph, Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734

Show 10 more examples...