rappern.

1611 R. Cotgrave Dict. French & Eng. Tongues Bourdes, fibs, rappers, lyes.

1657 J. Bramhall Castigations Mr. Hobbes i. 494 His sixth paradox is a rapper.

1672 J. Eachard Mr. Hobbs's State Nature Considered 96 You had a great deal better not be altogether so forward to charge people with flams and whiskers, when as the great rappers are wholly upon your own side.

1681 Heraclitus Ridens 18 Oct. 2/1 Care has told as many Rappers for the Dissenters as he thinks good.

a1734 R. North Examen (1740) ii. v. §139 402 What a Rapper is it then to say farther, as the Author affirms,—to condemn, and then—as more apparently guilty?

?1750 Apol. Life Mr. Bampfylde-Moore Carew (ed. 2) 233 Hummer, a great Lye, a Rapper.

1957 G. Heyer Sylvester vii. 76 I know that's a rapper, you odious little mischiefmaker, you!

1982 M. Ellingson Wicked Marquis xiv. 190 It did not take very long for it to occur to me that a schemer as good as you, who could tell such rappers without turning a hair, was exactly the sort of wife I needed.

1675 Woman turn'd Bully i. ii. 7 A Rapper would content her, so that it came in, in a right place, and had a good Emphasis.

1680 J. Dryden Kind Keeper iv. i. 42 If you can swear such Rappers too, there's hope of you.

1684 T. Otway Atheist ii. 11 He..swore half a dozen Rappers very youthfully.

1744 R. North & M. North Life Sir D. North & Rev. J. North 206 When he was very angry..he was apt to let go a Rapper or two.

1758 Jonathan Wild's Adv. to Successor in H. Fielding Jonathan Wild (1840) p. lxii The rapper, I think (as the cant phrase has it), is the most necessary man for your purpose.

1795 H. T. Potter New Dict. Cant & Flash Lang. (ed. 2) 48 Rapper, a perjurer.

1881 A. Trumble Slang Dict. 29/1 Rapper, a perjurer.

1755 S. Johnson Dict. Eng. Lang. Rapper, one who strikes.

1851 Calif. Christian Adv. (San Francisco) 24 Dec. 1/2 This lovely spot has become the seat of the delusive magic of modern ‘Rappers’.

1857 P. Cartwright Autobiogr. xix. 276 There is a dark, motley crowd of..spiritual rappers, so called.

1925 Amer. Mercury Mar. 333/2 Rappers appeared on all hands, and soon an improvement was made in England by the discovery of table-tipping.

1998 N. Whittaker Sweet Talk (1999) 116 Rappers—impatient customers who knocked loudly on counters to call attention—were another bugbear.

1914 H. A. Vachell Quinneys' x. 146 Gossip had it that he had begun life as a ‘rapper’.

1914 Glasgow Herald 24 Nov. 15 If they had asked the dealer..he might have told them that this clock, or that table, or those prints had come to him through a Rapper.

1928 Daily Express 29 Feb. 14 The rapper frequently adopts the Aladdin method of offering new lamps for old, undertaking, for example, to give the innocent owner of a little old Queen Anne bureau a brand-new chest of drawers and a cash sum in exchange.

1967 ‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp iv. 81 Her 'rapper' was shrill. She bleated, ‘I ain't no bitch. I'm a mother-fucking lady.’

1969 H. S. Thompson Let. 17 Dec. in Fear & Loathing in Amer. (2000) 234 Getting a local..rapper to do a brutal take-off on the (L.A.) Ralph Williams Ford commercials.

1972 C. Weston Poor, Poor Ophelia iii. 18 Let's you and me talk like crazy. You look like a rapper, and I feel like rapping.

1993 R. Rucker et al. Mondo 2000 (U.K. ed.) 166/2 His 1964 book Understanding Media was a bible for enlightened cultural rappers in the sixties.

1979 S. Robinson et al. Rapper's Delight (song, perf. ‘Sugarhill Gang’) in L. A. Stanley Rap: the Lyrics (1992) 319 I'm goin' down in history As the baddest rapper there ever could be.

1984 Wall St. Jrnl. 4 Dec. 16/1 Many raps still brag about the rapper's financial success and superior cool.

1993 Echoes 25 Dec. 37/4 Some artists, a significant minority, used to sing about other issues too, and now they don't. The only guys speaking out are the rappers.

2002 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 27 Sept. b23/1 Beans is a fast-talking, free-associating rapper from the Anti-Pop Consortium.