whipper-in

plural whipper-ins · plural whippers-in

1. hobbiesA huntsman who keeps the hounds from wandering, and whips them in, if necessary, to the chase.

   “[…] I shall take to hunting a pack of hounds myself after this.” “Do, my dear, and I'll be your whipper-in. I wonder whether Mrs. Proudie would join us.”

   1860 January – 1861 April, Anthony Trollope, chapter IV, in Framley Parsonage. […] (Collection of British Authors; 551), copyright edition, volume I, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, published April 1861, →OCLC

   4 more examples

   “[A]n' it was surprisin' to hear him rattle away The Fox Hunt; you'd raaly think you hard the hounds givin' tongue, an' the tarriers yelpin' always behind, an' the huntsman an' the whippers-in cheerin' or correctin' the dogs; it was, in short, the very nixt thing to seein' the hunt itself.”

   1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 524

   The other servant was an old man, who had been whipper-in to a baronet in the next county, and knew as much of the ways of wild animals as Burton did of those of his horses; […]

   1871, George MacDonald, chapter X, in The Vicar's Daughter

   Now the clerk […] saw the hunting man pass, and presently saw lots more of ’em, noblemen and gentry, and then he saw the hounds, the huntsman, Jim Treadhedge, the whipper-in, and I don’t know who besides.

   1894, Thomas Hardy, “Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk”, in Life’s Little Ironies […], London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC

   He heard the chaunting voices of huntsman and whippers-in; the noises of motor-cars moving slowly along the hard-rutted trackway, the old canal-bed, above the right bank of the river;

   1927, Henry William Williamson, Tarka the Otter, Chapter 19

   Synonyms: piqueur

2. governmentOne who enforces the discipline of a party, and urges the attendance and support of the members on all necessary occasions.

   Synonyms: whip