nipper

plural nippers

1. One who, or that which, nips.

   Watt saw the little movements of the stuff, the little bulgings and crumplings, and the sudden indrawings, where it was nipped, between forefinger and thumb probably, for those are the nippers.

   1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC

2. plural normallyAny of various devices (as pincers) for nipping.
3. UKinformalA child.

   Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?

   1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, part 1, page 55

   1 more example

   No, this is not a creche: nippers should not be running around, fighting under the pool table or generally creating havoc (this applies to dogs, too).

   2018 June 6, Tony Naylor, “The new rules of pub etiquette: don't flirt with bar staff or steal the glasses”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

4. AustraliaA child aged from 5 to 13 in the Australian surf life-saving clubs.

   The Nippers program, for children aged five to thirteen, promotes water safety skills and confidence in a safe beach environment

   2011 October 6, “Nipper numbers exceed 60,000”, in Australian for life, archived from the original on 21 Mar 2012

   5 more examples

   SLSA has become a multi-million dollar enterprise comprising 262 clubs located around the Australian coastline, with 100000 members, which included thousands of juniors or ‘nippers’, as they were more commonly known.

   2003, Some Like It Hot: The Beach As a Cultural Dimension

   It is the first day of training for a group of ten ‘little nippers’ (novice surf life-savers). An assortment of children expectantly hover in the clubhouse.

   2008, Tania Cassidy, Robyn L. Jones, Paul Potrac, Understanding Sports Coaching: The Social, Cultural and Pedagogical Foundations of Coaching Practice

   Every club around Australia offers a Nippers programme. Nippers is open to children from the age of 5 through to 13 years old […]

   2009, Didgeridoos and Didgeridon'ts: A Brit 's Guide to Moving Your Life Down Under

   Of our movement’s 153,000 members, over 58,500 are nippers (5-13 years). This equates to nearly 40% of our total membership and shows just how significant the junior movement is within surf lifesaving.

   2013 September 5, Eve Jeffery, “Nippers season begins on the north coast”, in Echonetdaily

   Within weeks across Australia, weekends at beaches will soon be dominated by junior lifesavers – known as “nippers” – swimming and board-riding along thousands of kilometres of coastline.

   2025 September 6, Ben Doherty, “‘Every surfer feeling this’: tight-knit community mourns fatal shark attack on Sydney’s northern beaches”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

5. historicalA boy working as a navvies' assistant.
6. CanadaNewfoundlandslangA mosquito.
7. archaicOne of four foreteeth in a horse.
8. obsoleteA satirist.

   […] ready backbiters, sore nippers, and spiteful reporters privily of good men.

   a. 1569 (date written), Roger Ascham, edited by Margaret Ascham, The Scholemaster: Or Plaine and Perfite Way of Teaching Children, to Vnderstand, Write, and Speake, the Latin Tong, […], London: […] John Daye, […], published 1570, →OCLC

9. obsoleteslangA pickpocket; a young or petty thief.

   Synonyms: cutpurse, dip, dipper, foist, footpad, gonoph, nip, pickpocket

10. A fish, the cunner.
11. archaicA European crab (Polybius henslowii).
12. The claws of a crab or lobster.
13. A young bluefish.
14. datedA machine used by a ticket inspector to stamp passengers' tickets.

    The railway ticket nipper has the identification number of the conductor on it […]

    1908, Transport World, volume 24, page 319

15. One of a pair of automatically locking handcuffs.
16. historicalOne of the gloves or mittens worn by fishermen to protect their hands from cold and abrasion.

    Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "nippers," the woolen circlets supposed to protect it.

    1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

    1 more example

    Today, there are new synthetic materials to protect the hands, but until recently, fishermen wore nippers—thick rubber gloves with cotton lining.

    1997, Mark Kurlansky, Cod, page 112

present singular third person nippers · participle present nippering · participle past nippered · past nippered

1. transitivenauticalTo seize (two ropes) together.

plural Nippers

1. A surname.