Sicker
adj, adv, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To percolate, trickle, or seep; to ooze, as water through a crack. dialectal, figuratively, intransitive, obsolete
"No drop of water fell from the hot blue Or sickered from the skeleton of earth."
- 1 comparative form of sick: more sick. comparative, form-of
- 2 Certain. dialectal, obsolete
"I'm sicker that he's not home."
- 3 Secure, safe. dialectal, obsolete
"To walk a sicker path"
- 1 Certainly. dialectal, obsolete
- 2 Securely. dialectal, obsolete
Example
More examples"The sicker of the two is not the one he thinks."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English siker, sikker, sykkere, secre, seccre, from Old English sēocra (“sicker”), equivalent to sick + -er.
From Middle English siker, from Old English sicer, sicor, from Proto-West Germanic *sikur (“free, secure”), from Latin sēcūrus (“secure”, literally “without care”). Doublet of sure and secure.
Inherited from Middle English *sikeren (attested only as sikeriez (“(it) trickles, (it) leaks, (it) oozes”)), from Old English sicerian (“to ooze, seep”), from Proto-West Germanic *sikarōn, from Proto-Germanic *sikarōną (“to trickle”), from Proto-Germanic *sīką (“slow running water”). Cognate with German Low German sickern (“to seep”), German sickern (“to seep, trickle”). Akin also to English sitch.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.