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spieler slang (orig. U.S.)|ˈspiːlə(r)| Also speeler, † speiler. [a. G. spieler player, gambler, gamester.] 1. A gambler; a card-sharper or professional swindler. Now chiefly Austral.
1859G. Matsell Vocabulum 83 Speiler, a gambler. 1885[see Murrumbidgee]. 1886N. Zealand Herald 1 June 4/7 It is stated that a fresh gang of ‘speelers’ are operating in the town. 1893J. A. Barry S. Brown's Bunyip, etc. 21 You want to get away amongst the spielers and forties of the big smoke? 1911W. H. Koebel In Maoriland Bush xxii. 283 The professional sharper or ‘spieler’..wings his periodical flights from Sydney or Melbourne. 1929Detective Fiction Weekly 13 July 731/2 Hard on their trail would come all the ‘magsmen’, the ‘spielers’, the dips, the ‘broadsmen’, and the ‘pickers up’. 1935H. R. Williams Comrades of Great Adventure 234 The spielers worked the three-card trick on the ‘mugs’. 1957J. Waten Shares in Murder 156 You could match your wits against smart con-men and spielers. 2. One who spiels (spiel v. 2); a ‘barker’; a voluble speaker.
1894Mid-Winter Appeal (San Francisco) 19 May 15/1 Some spielers for the Midway who attempted to lick the Camp gate keeper were sent up for 24 hours. 1901[see ballyhooer]. 1936J. L. Hodson Our Two Englands vi. 109 The public..are as fascinated by a good spieler or barker on the show front as they were then. 1937Printer's Ink Monthly May 42/3 Spieler, a radio commentator. 1956Time 11 June 42 Mary Costa..agrees that a girl spieler should be ‘good-looking but not too flashy to detract from the product’. 1976National Observer (U.S.) 8 May 16/1 His style is all style, a curious amalgam that incorporates at its corniest Dare to Be Great spieler Glenn Turner. 3. A gambling club.
1931Police Jrnl. IV. 502 A cardsharper (broadsman) met a confidence trickster (con-head) and a thief (tealeaf) in a gaming house (speiler). 1945P. Cheyney I'll say she Does iii. 57 It's a gamblin' spieler... There's big play there every night. 1955D. Webb Deadline for Crime iv. 88 Throughout Soho and Mayfair there are a number of what are known as speilers, illicit gambling dens run by the underworld mainly for the underworld, or wealthier mugs of the racecourses. 1962[see kite n. 4 c]. 1976J. O'Connor Eleventh Commandment iv. 62 A well-known boxing referee who used to run a dirty low-down dive of a spieler. |