gipper

plural gippers

1. obsolete except dialectalOne who gips (cleans fish in preparation for curing).

   One man takes the Herrings out of the Well with the Ladnet, and fils the Gippers baskets. ¶ 9 Gippers which cut their throats, and takes out the Guts, and fling the ful Herring into one Basket, and the ſhotten Herring into another.

   1641, Simon Smith, The Herring-Busse Trade […], page 9

1. A nickname for American actor and politician Ronald Reagan.

   […] most of the Ford vote from 1976, which Bush had hoped to claim, went heavily for the Gipper.

   2014, Craig Shirley, Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, unnumbered page

   2 more examples

   It took no more than a jaunty one-liner in the second presidential debate—"I refuse to hold my opponent's youth against him"—for large numbers of people to be reassured that if the Gipper had ever been out of it, he was now back.

   1992, Michael Weiler, W. Barnett Pearce, Reagan and Public Discourse in America, page 137

   Over the eight years of the Reagan presidency, the Gipper asked Congress for $16.1 billion more in spending than it passed into law.

   1999, Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, page 126