Meanings
knickerbocker1
- archaicattributiveuncountableOf or relating to knickerbockers.
His knickerbocker days are gone, His last long stockings laid away: My baby has his trousers on, — My boy becomes a man to-day.
1905, Daniel Leavens Cady, Stray Breaths of North East Song1 more example
...with a rudimentary beard to set it off, a dirty shirt, a rifle, a coat over my arm, and half a grouse in my knickerbocker pocket.
1892, The Twentieth Century - uncountableA linsey-woolsey fabric with a rough knotted surface on the right side, formerly used for women's dresses.
Knickerbocker2
plural Knickerbockers
- A surname from Dutch.
- archaichistoricalA New Yorker, particularly a scion of its old Dutch families
- historicalball gamesA player for the New York Knickerbockers
Origin
Knickerbocker · noun
- Dutchbakker
- GermanBäcker
- Dutchknicker“marble (toy)”
- Dutchbakker“baker”
- GermanBäcker
- Dutchknacker“cracker”
- EnglishKnickerbocker
From Diedrich Knickerbocker, the pseudonym adopted by Washington Irving for his 1809 A History of New York, probably for the Knickerbackers of Schaghticoke, New York, descended from the Dutch immigrant Harmen Jansen van Bommel(l), who went variously by the names van Wy(y)e, van Wyekycback(e), Kinnekerbacker, Knickelbacker, Knickerbacker, Kinckerbacker, Nyckbacker, and Kynckbacker. The surname is of uncertain etymology, being variously explained as a corruption of Wyekycback, Dutch knacker (“cracker”) + German Bäcker, Dutch bakker (“baker”), or Dutch knicker (“marble (toy)”) + German Bäcker, Dutch bakker.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
knickerbocker. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/knickerbocker
“knickerbocker.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/knickerbocker. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “knickerbocker,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/knickerbocker.
Source: knickerbocker on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.