tinhornadj.n.

1885 Weekly New Mexican Rev. 26 Feb. 4/2 We have been greatly annoyed of late by a lot of tin horn gamblers and prostitutes.

1912 Maclean's Mar. 478/1 He says he aint no piker, and he is a game loser, and nobody can walk around his collar, and he begins to put on airs like a tin horn gambler.

1931 G. F. Willison Here they dug Gold 216 Chuck-a-luck operators shake their dice in a ‘small churn-like affair of metal’—hence the expression, ‘tinhorn gambler’, for the game is rather looked down upon as one for ‘chubbers’ and chuck-a-luck gamblers are never admitted within the aristocratic circle of faro-dealers.

1958 P. Berton Klondike Fever Prelude 6 A circus parade of camp-followers crowded in upon them, saloon-keepers,..tinhorn gamblers and three-card monte men.

1963 Punch 17 July 102/2 A Western..with..tinhorn gamblers, fisticuffs, guns and so on.

1886 San Juan Prospector (Del Norte, Colorado) 4 Sept. 3/7 The Silverton vigilantes have notified the tin-horn element to meander.

1902 W. J. Ghent Our Benevolent Feudalism 171 What is colloquially known as ‘tin-horn’ gambling has advanced by leaps and bounds.

1903 A. Adams Log of Cowboy xii. 80 A tin horn lawyer.

1918 H. A. Vachell Some Happenings i. 2 Gamblers of the ‘tin-horn’ brand.

1935 E. Pound Let. 25 Sept. (1971) 276 All American Communists are, as far as I can discover, absolute boneheads, tinhorn repeaters.

1959 R. Stout Crime & Again vii. 104 ‘You tin-horn Casanova,’ she said... ‘Hinting to me that you had her, and I knew all the time you didn't.’

1977 C. Weston Rouse Demon xxiii. 111 This godforsaken tinhorn paradise.

1906 S. Ford Shorty McCabe ii. 34 He wasn't no Johnnie, and he wasn't no tinhorn sport.

1925 S. Lewis Martin Arrowsmith v. 47 I'm a——I'm a——Martin, I'm a tin-horn sport!

1958 ‘W. Henry’ Seven Men at Mimbres Springs x. 120 The stage roads of this whole plateau are littered with the bones of tinhorn sports who didn't have the brains to fort up before morning.

1975 R. Davies World of Wonders (1977) i. vi. 57 Swifty Dealer, the village tin~horn sport.

1887 F. Francis Saddle & Mocassin 225 The tin-horns were there in a body, with a few stacks of chips, playing light.

1908 S. E. White Riverman vi. 55 You ain't a tin~horn yourself?

1922 S. Lewis Babbitt ii. 22 I'll bet I make a whole lot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they got on dress-suits.

1949 Penguin New Writing 36 91 A guy got off at the next stop and came back for the change. A tin-horn.

1962 E. Lucia Klondike Kate iii. 65 Conditions produced the greatest opportunity for the tinhorns in the history of nineteenth-century gold strikes.

1977 D. Anthony Stud Game xix. 118 Tony Hunter called me... ‘Greetings, Tinhorn,’ he said.