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''toper'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔
toper - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
toper (plural topers)
- (now literary) Someone who drinks alcoholic beverages a lot; a drunkard.
- ✤ Synonyms: alcoholic, drunkard, tosspot; see also Thesaurus: drunkard
- ✤ A Toper this! He plied his glass/More strictly than he said the Mass, […]1
- ✤ The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously.2
- ✤ […] Mrs. Irons rebelled in her bed, and refused peremptorily to get up again, to furnish the musical topers with rum and lemons, […]3
- ✤ “Well, if you ask me, Barney is a combination of eight ball, mick, and shonicker,” said McArdle, one of the corner topers.4
- ✤ George Relph plays the part of the Vicar of the Parish, a railway enthusiast, who becomes amateur engine driver, with Sir Godfrey Tearle (the Bishop) as his fireman, while Stanley Holloway is the genial toper who provides the cash to buy the line.5
Etymology
From tope + -er.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA: /ˈtəʊpə/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
- (General American) IPA: /ˈtoʊpɚ/
- Rhymes: -əʊpə(ɹ)
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1818, John Keats, On Some Skulls in Beauly Abbey, near Inverness: ↩
1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Spouter-Inn”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 16: ↩
1863, J[oseph] Sheridan Le Fanu, “Narrating how Lieutenant Puddock and Captain Devereux Brewed a Bowl of Punch, and how They Sang and Discoursed Together”, in The House by the Church-yard. […], volume I, London: Tinsley, Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 304: ↩
1932, James T. Farrell, chapter 6, in Young Lonigan, →ISBN, section 3, page 156: ↩
1953 March, Baynham Honri, “Filming “The Titfield Thunderbolt””, in Railway Magazine, page 164: ↩
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