dunter

English

Noun

dunter (plural dunters)

1. (dialect, Scotland, Northumberland) A porpoise.
   • 1845, Thomas Ingoldsby [pseudonym; Richard Barham], The Ingoldsby Legends, New York, N.Y.: W. J. Widdleton, published 1865, page 80:

     "Here an old woman, thinking to help her pastor out of a dead lift, cried out, 'Aiblins, Sir, it was a dunter.' (The vulgar name of a species of whale common to the Scotch coast.)

   • 1883, “Local Records and Notes”, in Newcastle Courant, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, page 2:

     Porpoises, it is true, and "dunters" may be seen gambolling along the coast of Durham, but even that royal fish, the sturgeon, often caught in the last century, as the files of the Newcastle Courant prove, is a rarity on the coast.

   • 1904, “South Sea Fish Oils”, in Pacific Oil Reporter, volume 6, number 1, San Francisco, C.A.: Pacific Oil Reporter, page 5:

     The sperm whale is of course the best producer, but this species is not flagrant in the southern seas. The whale usually found is small in size and the head reservoir does not contain very large quantities of the oil. Among the smaller Cataceans, the porpoises, the puffy dunters, and grampuses, an excellent grade of oil is secured for commercial purposes by the natives who ply the waters many days and nights seeking the specie.^[sic]

2. The common eider, Somateria mollissima.

   Synonym: dunter goose

Derived terms

• dunter goose

References

• “dunter, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Anagrams

• Druten, deturn, retund, runted, turned