Hence appositely are the practisers thereof termed whisperers and backbiters: their heart suffers them not openly to avow, their conscience tells them they cannot fairly defend their practice.

Then Moran, with a suspicious wriggle of his body and a clutch at his rags, would burst out with "All me buzzim friends are turned backbiters"; and after a final "If yez don't drop your coddin' and diversion I'll lave some of yez a case," by way of warning to the boys, begin his recitation, or perhaps still delay, to ask, "Is there a crowd round me now?

5. Item, that she rails on men in authority, depraving their honours with bitter jests and taunts; and that she's a backbiter, setting strife betwixt bosom friends.

Detractor N. detractor, reprover; censor, censurer; cynic, critic, caviler, carper, word-catcher, frondeur; barracker^. defamer, backbiter, slanderer, Sir Benjamin Backbite, lampooner, satirist, traducer, libeler, calumniator, dawplucker^, Thersites^; Zoilus; good-natured friend [Iron.]; reviler, vituperator, castigator; shrew &c 901; muckraker. disapprover,

But neither the Queen, the Government, nor the Times could silence the born backbiters of greatness.

CANDOUR (Mrs.), the beau-ideal of female backbiters.

It was whispered by backbiters that in counsel and in public discourse Dom Manuel sonorously repeated the orders and opinions provided by Tohil Vaca: either way, the official utterances of the Count of Poictesme roused everywhere the kindly feeling which one reserves for old friends, so that no harm was done.

One who in an eastern city is merely a backbiter and slanderer, in the western woods lies in wait for his foe with a rifle; sharp practice in the east becomes highway robbery in the west; but at the same time negative good-nature becomes active self-sacrifice, and a general belief in virtue is translated into a prompt and determined war upon vice.

And check with an indignant frown The scurrilous backbiter; But speed good-humour as it runs, Be even tolerant of puns, And every mirth-exciter.

I defy any man in the ship to say that I am a backbiter, even against my wife, with whom I have a sort of lawful right to deal candidly.

His relations with the lady and with his patron were disturbed by the lauzengiers, the slanderers, the envious, and the backbiters of whom troubadours constantly complain, and he was obliged to leave Ventadour.