Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A cautious gambler.
  • noun A person regarded as petty or stingy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who makes small bets all over the lay-out. See pike, intransitive verb, 2.
  • noun On the stock-exchange, a professional speculator. See the extract.
  • noun 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.
  • noun A tramp; a vagrant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun military, historical A soldier armed with a pike, a pikeman.
  • noun One who bets or gambles only with small amounts of money.
  • noun A stingy person; a cheapskate.
  • noun An amateur.
  • noun Australia, New Zealand, slang One who refuses to go out with friends, or leaves a party early.
  • noun Australia, New Zealand, slang One who pikes (quits or backs out of a promise).

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Possibly from Piker, a poor migrant to California, after Pike, County in eastern Missouri.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From pike +‎ -er.

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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.

    Turn About Eleanor F. Graham [Illustrator] Cootes

  • (_Trying to explain_) No, no -- a piker is a tin horn.

    The Ghost Breaker A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts Charles Goddard 1915

  • 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.

    The Sisters-In-Law Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902

  • 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.

    GraniteGrok Skip 2008

  • Or was he a "piker"; a little fellow, the victim of his own fears and vanities?

    100\%: the Story of a Patriot Upton Sinclair 1923

  • Or was he a "piker"; a little fellow, the victim of his own fears and vanities?

    100% : The Story of a Patriot 1920

  • 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.

    The Nervous Housewife Abraham Myerson 1914

  • It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.

    American Adventures A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' Julian Street 1913

  • 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.

    The Sisters-In-Law Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902

  • 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.

    Media Matters for America - Limbaugh Wire S.S.U. 2010

Comments

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  • 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

  • "When one investigator in New York started to negotiate the terms of leaving a bar with a woman late at night, she demanded that he buy her a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey. And while he was it it, could he come with her to the butcher to pay an outstanding bill? (It never seems to occur to the investigators that the women they write up might have recognized them for what they were, and decided to mess around.)

    'I told her all the butcher shops were closed now,' he wrote, 'and I didn't care to travel around from store to store, she got sore at me and called me a piker and told me to beat it.'"

    Labor of Love by Moira Weigel, p 22

    August 31, 2016