sheep-biter

plural sheep-biters · alternative sheepbiter

1. obsoleteA sheepdog that worries (chases or attacks) sheep.

   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.

   1592, Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless

2. derogatoryfigurativelyobsoleteA contemptible person, especially one who practices petty thefts.

   His gait, like a sheep-biter, fleering aside

   1573, Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie

   3 more examples

   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.

   1604, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, The Honest Whore, act 2, scene 1

   Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly, / rascally sheep-biter come by some notable / shame?

   c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 5

   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.

   1669, Sir Roger L'Estrange, Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists, Fable CCCXXX: A Sheep-Biter Hang'd, page 296