English
bicker
Pronunciation Verb

bicker (bickers, present participle bickering; past and past participle bickered)

  1. To quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.
    They bickered about dinner every evening.
    • petty things about which men cark and bicker
  2. To brawl or move tremulously, quiver, shimmer (of a water stream, light, flame, etc.)
    • 1886, The Brook, by Tennyson
      I come from haunts of coot and hern, / I make a sudden sally, / And sparkle out among the fern, / To bicker down a valley.
    • They [streamlets] bickered through the sunny shade.
  3. (of rain) To patter.
  4. To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight.
    • Two eagles had a conflict, and bickered together.
Synonyms Translations Noun

bicker (plural bickers)

  1. A skirmish; an encounter.
  2. (Scotland, obsolete) A fight with stones between two parties of boys.
  3. A wrangle; also, a noise, as in angry contention.
  4. The process by which selective eating clubs at Princeton University choose new members.
    • 2005, Alison Fraser, Princeton University: Princeton, New Jersey, College Prowler, Inc (ISBN 9781596581005), page 41:
      Bicker process varies by club, and there are often concerns of the rights of female students during bicker […]
Translations Noun

bicker (plural bickers)

  1. (Scotland) A wooden drinking-cup or other dish.
    • 1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford 2010, p. 6:
      …the liquors were handed around in great fulness, the ale in large wooden bickers, and the brandy in capacious horns of oxen.


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