hooter

hooter [hoo-ter] ExamplesWord Origin noun

1. a person or thing that hoots.
2. British. a car horn.
3. British Slang. the nose.

Origin of hooter First recorded in 1665–75; hoot1 + -er1 Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019 Examples from the Web for hooter Contemporary Examples of hooter

It’s a hooter you’d only be delighted with if you were a snowman.

Kate’s First Official Portrait: Will Artist be Sent To Tower for Hideous Picture?

Tom Sykes

January 11, 2013

Historical Examples of hooter

All too soon the blue peter at half-mast and the blowing of the hooter recalled them.

The Bonadventure

Edmund Blunden

Linkin ses “he warn’t skeered a hooter, but was only rarin mad.”

Letters of Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville Militia

Seba Smith

One of our aeroplanes sounded its hooter and dropped a message about 600 yards away.

Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front

E. W. Hornung

The people that call you names or make faces at you after you’ve saved their silly lives by blowing the hooter at them.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 4th 1914

Various

Mr. Arnold, who had come to fetch his wife, was sounding his hooter as a signal on the drive.

For the Sake of the School

Angela Brazil

British Dictionary definitions for hooter hooter noun mainly British

1. a person or thing that hoots, esp a car horn
2. slang a nose

Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for hooter n.

by 1823, “anything that hoots,” especially an owl, agent noun from hoot (v.). Slang meaning “nose” is from 1958. Meaning “a woman’s breast” (usually in plural hooters) attested by 1972. The Hooters restaurant chain began 1983 in Clearwater, Florida, U.S.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper