Nicker
noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Pound sterling. British, slang
"This coat cost me 50 nicker."
- 2 A soft neighing sound characteristic of a horse.
- 3 One of the night brawlers of London formerly noted for breaking windows with halfpence. obsolete, slang
"1713-1714, John Arbuthnot, Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus your modern musicians want art to defend their windows from common nickers"
- 4 A type of mythological sea creature or sea monster; also, a water sprite; a nix or nixie; a mermaid or merman.
"And in another tale, told at Kemnitz of the Nicker, as he is there called, when he asks the midwife how much he owes her, she answers that she will take no more from him than from other people."
- 5 nigger. derogatory, ethnic, euphemistic, offensive, slur, vulgar
Show 5 more definitions
- 6 the characteristic sounds made by a horse wordnet
- 7 A snigger or suppressed laugh.
- 8 The cutting lip which projects downward at the edge of a boring bit and cuts a circular groove in the wood to limit the size of the hole that is bored.
- 9 Hippopotamus.
- 10 Someone who nicks (steals) something, a thief. informal
"He […] was far more interested in the fact that I was a car thief and an expert driver than that I was a bandit. […] Car nicker, are you?"
- 1 To make a soft neighing sound characteristic of a horse.
"Behind him, old Akthoob was grumbling loudly, saying something about the midday meal, and Haral, the black Feridoon pony, snuffing in the old, familiar scent of the green meadows of the Chaya's banks, the warm sweet smells of home, was nickering eagerly."
- 2 To snatch or steal. UK, informal
- 3 make a characteristic sound, of a horse wordnet
- 4 To produce a snigger or suppressed laugh.
Example
More examples"Seems? Well, this seems to be a waste of my time. That is 900 nicker in any shop you're lucky enough to find one in. And you're complaining about 200? What school of finance did you study?"
Etymology
Imitative; from 1774.
From nick + -er.
From Middle English niker, from Old English nicor, from Proto-Germanic *nikwis. Cognate with German Nix (“water demon”) and German Nixe (“female water-spirit”); also related to Old Norse nykr (“water demon”) (see there for further descendants). Doublet of nix.
Mispronunciation of nigger.
Related phrases
More for "nicker"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.