trougher

English

Etymology

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

Noun

trougher (countable and uncountable, plural troughers)

1. (chiefly British) A greedy person.
   • 1939, Harold Armitage, Early Man in Hallamshire‎, 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:

     A legendary trougher - he could eat for England.

   • 2012, James Anderson, Jimmy: My Story‎:

     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?‎:

     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, 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, 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:

     Humza is the trougher's trougher.

3. Alternative spelling of troffer