never smoker

never smoker (plural never smokers)

1. Nonstandard spelling of never-smoker.
   • 1937, The Journal of School Health, American School Health Association, page 144,

     By smoking twenty to thirty cigarettes a day for twenty-five years or more, a man ups his risk twenty-two times over that of a never smoker.

   • 1990, Health Benefits of Smoking Cessation: A Report of the Surgeon General, DIANE Publishing Company, page 197:

     Line A represents an immediate and complete reversal of the effect of smoking, so that the quitter almost instantly assumes the rate of the never smoker.

   • 1991, American Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation Convention, Abstracts of Research Papers, page 127:

     In 1968 subjects classified themselves according to their present smoking behavior as either a smoker, ex-smoker or never smoker.

   • 2005, Fred Hirsch, IASLC Textbook of Prevention and Detection of Early Lung Cancer, page 38:

     ... and the age-specific lung cancer death rate does not decline to that of the never smoker.

• The hyphenated spelling never-smoker is much more common when the noun is used attributively — that is, when it's used to modify another noun, as in "never-smoker males".