snapper n Cp FARMER & HENLEY (1903) ~ 'a braggart' US, BOWEN Sea Slang (1929) ~ -rigged 'ship which is poorly rigged and found, or a man with few clothes' E Can and Amer, BERREY 437 ~ rig 'second-hand suit,' Am Speech v, 391 herring- ~ 'New Foundlander or Nova Scotian; sometimes an inhabitant of Maine.'
1 A skilled, successful fisherman; also attrib.
[1906] GRENFELL 51-2 Tom was a snapper fisherman,' and if any boat in the harbor got a load it was as certain as daylight that Tom's punt did not go home empty. 1910 ibid 36 If there was one ocean-going skipper on the coast known to be more of a 'snapper' than the rest, that man was Elijah Anderson. [1911] ibid 69 Every year the 'snapper' fishermen were pushing further and further north, where the coast is not only unlighted and unmarked but also unsurveyed and uncharted.
2 Attrib, comb snapper boat: a type of boat fishing with long lines.
M 68-3 In the 1940's another type of boat was added to the skiff, 'snapper boats' (long-liner type which was from forty to forty-five feet in the keel). Those were still in use when the Trepassey fishery failed. The men owning those two types of boats carried on the fishery away from home. The snapper boats at first went to the Glace Bay and Dingwall areas of Nova Scotia from April to November. They fished by means of long lines and sold their catches to the fresh-fish producing plants in that area.
snapper-rigged: dressed unconventionally.
P 269-464 ~ dressed up funny, as of a child wearing a short coat over a skirt over a pair of pants. P 189-466 ~ of one's dress, untidy.
