Howler vs Growler - What's the difference?

As nouns the difference between howler and growler

is that howler is that which howls, especially an animal which howls, such as a wolf or a howler monkey while growler is a person, creature or thing that growls.

howler

English

Noun

(en noun)

That which howls, especially an animal which howls, such as a wolf or a howler monkey.

A person hired to howl at a funeral

Other senses are derivatives of the intensifier "howling", Beale, Paul; Partridge, Eric (1984). A dictionary of slang and unconventional English: colloquialisms and catch-phrases, solecisms and catachreses, nicknames, and vulgarisms. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-594980-2 as in "howling wilderness", (Deuteronomy 32:10)Holy Bible: King James Version, The Scofield Study Bible III, Duradera Zipper Black. Oxford University Press, USA. 2005. ISBN 0-19-527867-4.

A painfully obvious mistake.

* 2009 , Tom Burton, Quadrant , November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 78:

A howler is a glaring mistake, a mistake that cries out to be noticed.

A hilarious joke.

A bitterly cold day

A heavy fall, literally or figuratively

A serious accident (especially to come a howler or go a howler, e.g. "Our hansom came a howler"; compare: come a cropper)

A tremendous lie

A fashionably but extravagantly overdressed man, a "howling swell"

A calamity howler is "one that makes dismal predictions of impending disaster"Taylor, D. Wooster. The dust of Frisco Town, dedicated to the calamity howler. Publisher: Paul Elder, San Francisco May be downloaded from: http://archive.org/details/dustoffriscotown00taylrich

References

growler

English

Noun

(en noun)

A person, creature or thing that growls.

(historical, slang) A cab with four wheels.

* 1887 , , Part 2 Ch. 7

The ordinary London growler is considerably less wide than a gentleman's brougham.

* 2006 , Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day , Vintage 2007, p. 254:

Lew pulled his socks from a jacket pocket, grabbed his own shoes, and together they proceeded to the street and into a growler , and were off.

A small iceberg or ice floe which is barely visible over the surface of the water.

* 2002 , Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea , Vintage 2003, p. 152:

A great ‘growler ’ iceberg was sighted this afternoon at a distance of approximately half a mile; the size of a large London house, more or less.

* 2007 , Matthew Taylor, The Guardian , 24 November 2007 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/24/antarctica.climatechange]:

As the cruise ship Explorer was picking its way through the Antarctic sea ice, it hit what experts believe was a "growler " - a huge iceberg shorn from the Antarctic ice shelf.

(informal) A kind of jug used to carry beer (in current usage, a 2-liter or 64-ounce container with or without a handle; sometimes extended to similarly shaped 32-ounce jug, but not bottles).

* 1940 , , Act 1

... their favoring breeze has the stink of nickel whiskey on its breath, and their sea is a growler of lager and ale ...

* 2002 , Louis M. Soletsky, 100 Years of Medicine , iUniverse, ISBN 9780595229253, page 104:

This container was a round lidded tin with a handle and was colloquially called a growler'. to get daddy or mommy a ' growler of beer, which was, by the way, approximately a quart.

(dialect, UK, Yorkshire) A pork pie.

* 2008 , Christina McDermott, The Guardian , 22 August 2008 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/aug/22/foodanddrink]:

Now, on first impression, a pork pie - or a ‘growler ’ if you're from Yorkshire - looks like a delicious snack.

(British, slang) The vulva.

* 2007 , Cesca Martin, Agony Angel , Troubadour Publishing 2007, pp. 125-6:

On our first meeting he'd asked me if I dyed my hair. I told him I did and his follow up(SIC) question had been the much under rated(SIC), "What colour's your growler then?"