piker









piker


noun Informal.

  1. a person who does anything in a contemptibly small or cheap way.
  2. a stingy, tight-fisted person; tightwad.
  3. a person who gambles, speculates, etc., in a small, cautious way.

noun slang

  1. Australian a wild bullock
  2. Australian and NZ a useless person; failure
  3. US, Australian and NZ a lazy person; shirker
  4. a mean person

n.“miserly person,” 1872, formerly “poor migrant to California” (1860), earlier pike (1854), perhaps originally “vagrant who wanders the pike (n.1)” (which is the notion in Sussex dialectal piker “vagrant, tramp, gypsy,” 1838), but Barnhart, OED and others suggest the American English word ultimately is a reference to people from Pike County, Missouri.

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