wapper

A mischievous sprite.

Noun

A mischievous sprite.
- "And a wapper, too; when I first saw it I thought it was a rabbit, and now it's bigger than a deer, and still a mile or two off," said Joe. - 1863, John Beauchamp Jones, Wild Western Scenes, page 40:
- The Wapper had, just for the fun of it, put an iron pot under the hat. - 2022, William Elliot Griffis, Belgian Fairy Tales:
- Presently the good woman discovered to her horror that the foundling was swelling and becoming heavy, and when she put it down the Wapper assumed his own shape and ran off shrieking. - 2022, Edward Neville Vose, The...

Borrowing from Flemish

To exhaust; to tire out.
- this is it, That makes the wapper'd widow wed again; - 1623, William Shakespeare, The Life of Tymon of Athens:
- Emery Ann declared to me, privately, after I had said in general council that I felt it impossible, that she was "really wappered out with mountains; […]" - 1876, Adeline Dutton Train Whitney, Sights and Insights:...
- Marry, 'tis nigh on forty mile, I warrant. Thou'll not see Stratford to-night, sir; thy horse is wappered out, and that I plainly see." - 1899, Joseph Arthur Gibbs, A Cotswold Village, page 258:
To move weakly or tremulously; to flag.
- But still he stode, his face to set awrye, And wappering turnid vp his white of eye. - 1610, John Higgins, The Mirour for Magistrates:
- She was toothlesse, chap-falne, hollow-eyed, and wappering withall, her haire sluttishly hanging about her eares, unkempt, and as greazie as it was knotty; - 1634, Mateo Alemán, The Rogve: Or, The Life of Gvzman de...
- Miss Mansfield abandons her salt furrow and in two stanzas lies flapping and wappering. - 1912 March 28, “Present-Day Criticism”, in The New Age, volume 10, number 22, page 519:

Frequentative of wap; compare German dialect wappern, wippern (“to move up and down, to rock”).