c1440 Promptorium Parvulorum 217/2 Gruntare, grunnitor.

1591 R. Percyvall Bibliotheca Hispanica Dict. at Grunidor A grunter.

1652 R. Brome Joviall Crew ii. sig. F3 Here's Grunter and Bleater, with Tib of the Buttry.

1798 R. Bloomfield Summer in Farmer's Boy 248 Whose [the Gander's] nibbling warfare on the grunter's side, Is welcome pleasure to his bristly hide.

1819 W. Scott Ivanhoe I. i. 14 Collecting the refractory grunters.

1823 P. Egan Grose's Classical Dict. Vulgar Tongue (rev. ed.) Grunter's gig, a smoaked hog's face.

1847 Ld. Tennyson Princess v. 95 A draggled mawkin, thou, That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge.

1853 W. J. Hickie tr. Aristophanes Comedies I. 33 For how much shall I buy your little grunters of you?

1889 F. W. Farrar Lives Fathers II. xii. 348 Jerome has no name for him but the ‘grunter’.

1831 W. Youatt Horse x. 196 Every horse violently exercised on a full stomach, or when overloaded with fat, will grunt very much like a hog..but there are some horses who will at all times utter this sound, if suddenly touched with the whip or spur. They are called Grunters, and should be avoided.

1888 W. Williams Princ. & Pract. Vet. Med. (ed. 5) 553 If a horse when struck at or suddenly moved, emits, during expiration, a grunting sound, it is called a ‘grunter’.

1785 F. Grose Classical Dict. Vulgar Tongue Grunter, a shilling.

1858 A. Mayhew Paved with Gold iii. iii. 267 One of the men..had only taken three ‘twelvers’ and a ‘grunter’.

1823 P. Egan Grose's Dict. Vulgar Tongue Grunters, traps, officers of justice.