roysterer

English

Etymology

royster +‎ -er

Noun

roysterer (plural roysterers)

1. (obsolete) Someone who revels, a partier
   • 1902, Hilaire Belloc, The Path To Rome:

     When his father saw him he fumed terribly, cursing like a pagan, and asking whether his son were a roysterer fit for the gallows as well as a fool fit for a cassock. On hearing which complaint the son very humbly and contritely said
     'It is not my fault but the contact with the things of the Church that makes me gambol and frisk, just as the Devil they say is a good enough fellow left to himself and is only moderately heated, yet when you put him into holy water all the world is witness how he hisses and boils.'

   • 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskerville's:

     But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.'

Synonyms

• merrymaker