Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Slang A cautious gambler.
- n. Slang A person regarded as petty or stingy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A tramp; a vagrant.
- n. One who makes small bets all over the lay-out. See pike, intransitive verb, 2.
- n. On the stock-exchange, a professional speculator. See the extract.
- n. One who uses a pike or pointed implement; specifically, in the United States, in ice-harvesting, one who thus controls the movement of cakes of ice.
Wiktionary
- n. military, historical A soldier armed with a pike, a pikeman.
- n. One who bets or gambles only with small amounts of money.
- n. A stingy person; a cheapskate.
- n. An amateur.
- n. Australia, New Zealand, slang One who refuses to go out with friends, or leaves a party early.
- n. Australia, New Zealand, slang One who pikes (quits or backs out of a promise).
Etymologies
- From pike + -er. (Wiktionary)
- Possibly from Piker, a poor migrant to California, after Pike County in eastern Missouri. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I've always thought Stevie was a kind of piker, that is that she would say she was going to do a thing, and then from sheer laziness not do it.”
“(_Trying to explain_) No, no -- a piker is a tin horn.”
“It would have horrified him to be called a piker, for his instincts were really lavish, and the economical habit an achievement in which he took a resentful pride.”
“I do not begrudge him is wealth (except he is known as a piker to boot); I excoriate the both of them for their two-faced-ness.”
“Or was he a "piker"; a little fellow, the victim of his own fears and vanities?”
“American is lavish, hates to stint, detests being a "piker", says, "Oh, what's the difference; it will all be the same in a hundred years," but kicks himself mentally afterwards.”
“It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.”
“He had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent native claret where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to appear a "piker" in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler.”
“He later upped his donation to $400,000 so he wouldn't look like a "piker" and "to stay in the game" because he said that this year's "stunning" donations were well ahead of what they collected last year.”
“Hoodathunk (sponsored by the FSM, Noodles for Freedom!) says: lux, grassley is a piker.”
Think Progress » Sen. Gregg Touts The CBO On Fox News, But Then Bashes It On CNN
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘piker’.
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EN - xenophobic terms
Alle Menschen werden Brüder - sooner or later? Derogatory terms for anybody different.
abe, anchor baby, ann, ape, apple, asian nigger, aunt jemima , aunt jane, aunt mary, aunt sally, banana, beaner and 315 more...
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Auslang
Australian colloquialisms, slang and unique lingual artifacts.
bludger, strewth, shonky, cow cockie, sickie, woop woop, chunder, furphy, buckley's chance, whinge, root barrier, nuff nuff and 8 more...
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fav1
ostensibly, fait accompli, edification, machination, vamp, abstruse, ebullient, tantamount, reductio, asymptotic, ad hominem, syllogism and 15 more...
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anotherfailedattempt's Words
kakistocracy, conflagration, pollyanna, equanimity, punctillious, obstreperous, ribald, belligerent, truculent, verbose, lachrymose, onanism and 278 more...
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some words
phatic, macerate, amanuenses, theophagy, seraglio, gloaming, geophagy, metaphone, anastrophe, neologism, tetragrammaton, bête noire and 568 more...
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Slang words of Irish origin according...
Compare the etymologies of these words as given in the OED with the Gaelic backgrounders in this book, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads (Counterpunch, 2007). Awai...
smack, snazzy, pussy, geek, dork, dude, smudge, snap, slugger, slum, scam, slew and 102 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
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msc's Words
pugilist, threepeat, bloviate, palaver, syncreism, pastiche, eschatology, peripatetic, glossolalia, busker, nudnik, troglodyte and 213 more...
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depsypher's Words
parsimonious, veisalgia, mawkish, alacrity, punctilious, interregnum, surfeit, inchoate, vouchsafe, nolo contendere, larboard, chrysalis and 20 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for piker.
xntrek Someone who fails to meet the expectations they themselves set (e.g. go out, drink, party).
Is especially relevant whereby they fail to inform anyone of the failure to go/meet/etc or do so at the very last minute.
see also piking May 10, 2009