swill-bowl

plural swill-bowls · alternative swylbolle · alternative swillbowl

1. obsoleteA drunkard.

   Wantonness was never such a swill-bowl of ribaldry; nor Idleness ever such a carouser of knavery.

   1593, Gabriel Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation; or, A New Praise of the Old Ass, published 1815, page 141

   1 more example

   But nothing like to that hath been shewed since in the English church by the spiritual tyrant of Rome and his mitred termagants, at the provocation of their oiled swill-bowls and blind Balaamites. For they most cruelly brent those innocents which did but only read the testament of God in their mother-tongue; and do not yet repent them of that mischief, but continue therein.

   1547, John Bale, The Second Examination of Anne Askewe; republished in Christmas, Henry, editor, Select Works of John Bale, The Parker Society edition, Cambridge: University Press, 1849, Britannish, page 193

   Synonyms: reel-pot, squeeze-grape