garreter
English
editEtymology
editNoun
editgarreter (plural garreters)
- Alternative form of garreteer (“poor writer; literary hack”)
- 1972, Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture, page 384:
- Not that the existence of Grub street is to be doubted: it was, indeed, a grim actuality, and many a garreter realised by experience
How unhappy's the fate
To live by one's pate
And to be forced to write hackney for bread.
- (obsolete) A thief who used housetops to enter by garret windows.
- Synonym: (slang) dancer
- 1889, Charles Tempest Clarkson, J. Hall Richardson, Police!, page 260:
- [A]bout 40 were burglars, "dancers," "garreters," and other adepts with the skeleton keys.