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trougher

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From trough +‎ -er, due to comparisons between greedy people and pigs with their snouts in the trough.

Noun

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trougher (countable and uncountable, plural troughers)

  1. (chiefly British) A greedy person.
    • 1939, Harold Armitage, Early Man in Hallamshire[1], page 78:
      As Abel Magwitch would have said, he was "a heavy grubber"; or as a Yorkshireman, with a similar disregard for elegance, would express it, "a good trougher."
    • 1999 August, Dickie Bird, White Cap and Bails[2]:
      A legendary trougher - he could eat for England.
    • 2012, James Anderson, Jimmy: My Story[3]:
      Forget the fact I was playing for England at cricket: I was also an Olympic-standard trougher, and so I would order big steaks, burgers, whatever I fancied, and Blacky thought nothing of ordering the same thing, or something similar.
    • 2017, Laura Kemp, Whatever Happened to Vicky Hope's Back Up Man?[4]:
      Her appetite has definitely gone down, she's the classic bored trougher, but here there's so much to do she can sometimes forget to eat.
  2. (by extension) (chiefly British) A careerist politician, especially one representing the Scottish National Party.
    • 1997, The Canadian Forum[5], volume 76, page 10:
      And according to an insistent story, Vince MacLean, a formal provincial Liberal leader and prodigious trougher running in Sydney - Victoria, was slapped in thr face by a woman at the door.
    • 2017, Dr. Stephen Harkins, Dr. Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Poor News: Media Discourses of Poverty in Times of Austerity[6], page 119:
      Many of the critical quotations about Rolnik's role in the UN come from Conservative MPs: "The aid budget is a way in which poor people from Britain pay for the lifestyle of rich people in developing countries. We are having to pay taxes to put this international trougher up in a four-star hotel.
    • 2022 February 25, Craig Murray, craigmurray.org.uk[7]:
      Humza is the trougher's trougher.
  3. Alternative spelling of troffer