sheep-biter
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]sheep + biter (“one who bites”). Figurative term possibly influenced by the fable "De cane oves domini sui occidente, a quo suspensus est" in Hecatomythium by Laurentius Abstemius (later included with Aesop's Fables as "A Sheep-Biter Hang'd" — see quotations).
Noun
[edit]sheep-biter (plural sheep-biters)
- (obsolete) A sheepdog that worries (chases or attacks) sheep.
- 1592, Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless:
- What curre will not bawle, & be ready to flye on a mans face, when he is set on by his master, who, if hee bee not by to encourage him, he casts his taile betwixt his legges, & steales away like a sheepe byter.
- (obsolete, figurative, derogatory) A contemptible person, especially one who practices petty thefts.
- 1573, Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie:
- His gait, like a sheep-biter, fleering aside
- 1604, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, The Honest Whore, act 2, scene 1:
- A poor man has but one ewe, and this grandee sheep-biter leaves whole flocks of fat wethers, whom he may knock down, to deuour this.
- c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 5:
- Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly, / rascally sheep-biter come by some notable / shame?
- 1669, Sir Roger L'Estrange, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists[1], Fable CCCXXX: A Sheep-Biter Hang'd, page 296:
- There are Political Sheep-biters as well as Pastoral; Betrayers of Publick Trusts as well as of Private; And Humane Curs that are as Wolvish as the Other.
Synonyms
[edit]- See Thesaurus:git and Thesaurus:thief