nikker

plural nikkers

1. alternativeuncommonAlternative form of nicker (“A sea devil.”).

   Whether the monster slain is a sea-dragon or a nikker remains a problem. […]

   1961, Sietze Buning, A Linguistic Analysis of Words Referring to Monsters in Beowulf, volume 2, page 280

   4 more examples

   Davy Jones's Locker [...] A sailor's name for a principal sea-devil, a nikker. - HALLIWELL.

   1877, Charles Mackay, The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe: And More Especially of the English and Lowland Scotch, and Their Slang, Cant, and Colloquial Dialects, page 265

   ... and killing sea-nikkers by night. Alone will I combat with this demon, the giant Grendel . . . I shall wrestle for life, foe against foe.

   1919, Donald Alexander Mackenzie, The World's Heritage of Epical, Heroic and Romantic Literature, page 12

   If the poet has mixed up Danish and English scenery in his mere, and the "nikkers" and other monsters have no business in an English lake, they are most certainly there.

   2018 March 29, Edith Elizabeth Wardale, Revival: Chapters on Old English Literature (1935), Routledge, →ISBN

   "A nikker is Davy Jones, / Just one more plug, an' a swig at the jug, / An' up with the skull an' bones."

   2022 June 12, Louis Tracy, The Greatest Mysteries of Louis Tracy: 14 Novels in One Edition, DigiCat