pecker

Meanings

nounpecker (plural peckers)

plural peckers

Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill, particularly
Two studies of British civil servants, for example, suggest that those at the top of the heap are less stressed than those near the bottom. Work on other species, too, indicates that when it comes to pecking orders, the peckees are more stressed than the peckers.
2003 October 18, “Stress Test”, in The Economist
Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill
1. regionaluncommonAny tool used in a pecking fashion, particularly kinds of hoes or pickaxes.
  Pecker, small pickaxe for cutting furze.
  1948, M. Carbery, E. Grey, Hertfordshire Heritage, page 120
  3 more examples
  The women with short peckers or parers,... of a foote long and about fiue inches in breadth: doe onely breake the vpper part of the ground to rayse vp the weedes, grasse, & old stubbes of corne stalkes with their rootes... For their corne,... with a pecker they make a hole, wherein they put foure graines.
  1588, Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, sig. C2
  Let sturdy youths their pointed peckers ply, Till the rais'd roots loose on the surface lie.
  1782, J. Scott, Poetical Works, page 119
  A small narrow hoe or pecker... A small hand-pecker.
  1848, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 9 ii. 551
2. uncommonAny machine or machine part moving in a pecking fashion, particularly
  The upper end of the finger o carries a "pecker" p, which consists of a hardened steel piece with a V edge. This pecker is engaged by any one of several steps or notches in a stepped block m carried by the rocking lever l.
  1922, Whittaker's Mechanical Engineer's Pocket Book, page 368
3. obsoleteuncommonbusinessA picker, a shuttle-driver: the device which moves backwards and forwards in the shuttle-box to drive the shuttle through the warp.
  The shuttle... receives its motion from the peckers connected with cords pulled by the pecking lever.
  1807, Thomas Johnson, British Patent № 3023 (1856), section 5
  1 more example
  When the shaft [of the draw-boy] rocks from side to side of the machine, it will carry the pecker... with it.
  1878, Alfred Barlow, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, x. 136
4. historicaluncommoncommunicationsA kind of V-shaped telegraphic relay.
  Click, click, click, the pecker is at work.
  1858 June 13, H.C.F. Jenkin, letter in Papers (1887), volume I, page lxxxvi
  1 more example
  Pecker, the small cylindrical pin which rises and falls in scanning the holes punched in a slip corresponding to the coding of the message.
  1940, Chambers's Technical Dictionary, 621/1
5. USabbreviationclippinghistoricalregionaluncommonClipping of pecker mill, a rice mill.
  Rice mills, called pecker, cog, and water mills... The first... so called, from the pestle's striking... in the manner of a wood pecker.
  1802, J. Drayton, A view of South Carolina, as respects her natural and civil concerns, page 121
  1 more example
  After being thrashed by flail or whipped off, the rice was milled and dressed wholly by hand or by a crude machine called a ‘pecker’.
  1949, S. C. Murray, This Our Land: the Story of the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, page 41
6. biologyA bird, particularly a member of the group including the woodpeckers, flowerpeckers, oxpeckers, and berrypeckers.
  The Titmouse, and the Peckers hungry Brood.
  1697, Publius Virgilius Maro, translated by John Dryden, Georgics, section IV
  1 more example
  By far the greater number of modern birds belong to the... orders of the perchers, the peckers, and the birds of prey.
  1884 January, George Allen, Longman's Magazine, page 294
7. USabbreviationclippingcolloquialregionalusuallybiologyClipping of woodpecker (Picidae).
  The pecker was esteemed a sacred and divine bird.
  1883, Jacob Grimm, translated by J.S. Stallybrass, Teutonic Mythology, volume III, page 973
  1 more example
  I've been feeding several downy ’peckers from my short-perched tubes for years.
  1980 January 20, Washington Post, m1
8. UKobsoleteregionalAn eater, a diner.
  He's a rare pecker.
  1862, C.C. Robinson, The Dialect of Leeds & Its Neighbourhood, page 383
  2 more examples
  Peck... A hearty eater is generally called ‘a rare pecker’.
  1873, Slang Dictionary
  But I've been better iver since, an' beginnin' to eat my vittles, too, though I'm never no great pecker.
  1894, Mrs. H. Ward, Marcella, II. iv. v. 476
9. UKregionalA bird's beak.
  Pecker, a bird's bill
  1891, G. Sweetman, A Glossary of Words used by the rural population in the parish and neighbourhood of Wincanton, Somerset
  1 more example
  Q. What does a bird peck its food up with?... [Wiltshire] Beak, pecker.
  1967, H. Orton & M. F. Wakelin, A Survey of English dialects B, volume 4
  Synonyms: bill, neb, nib
10. USregionalslangA penis; cock, dick.
  The penis... pecker.
  1902, J. S. Farmer, W. E. Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, London, V. 289/2
  3 more examples
  Ought to stand on Times Square with my pecker in my hand and piss in the gutter.
  1936, Henry Miller, “The Tailor Shop”, in Black Spring, Paris: The Obelisk Press […], →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1963, →ISBN, pages 125–126
  There is a house down in New Orleans, They call it The Rising Sun, When you want to get your pecker spoilt, That's where you get it done.
  1964, American Folk Music Occasional, i. 12
  He has the biggest pecker in the pool, politically speaking.
  1990 Fall, Paris Review, volume 32, number 116, page 171
  Synonyms: penis
UKbroadlycolloquialA nose.
Synonyms: nose
UKbroadlycolloquialSpirits, nerve, courage.
Be firm, my moral pecker.
1875, W.S. Gilbert, Trial by Jury, section 4
4 more examples
Mr. King... misstated the fact in saying that he had put a piece of lighted paper to the master's nose while asleep in that house; it was his hot pipe that he applied to the sleeper's nostrils, at the same time crying: Come, old chap, keep your pecker up.
1845 September 15, Times, London, 8/3
Pecker, ‘keep your Pecker up’,... literally, keep your beak and head well up, ‘never say die’.
1873, Slang Dictionary
... he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker with such tonics as Mariani dispensed.
1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 5, in Lord Jim
Fred and I managed to keep our peckers up somehow.
2003, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, page xii
Synonyms: courage
abbreviationderogatoryin pluralslangShort for peckerwood ("whitey; white trash")
These peckers know that as well as me.
1966, R.G. Toepfer, Witness, xvi. 127
1 more example
Those cats wouldn't let us get five feet from the Y.M.C.A. Like real peckers, they'd say, ‘If I had you down South.’
1971, D. Wells, S. Dance, Night People, i. 7
abbreviationderogatoryin pluralslangShort for peckerhead ("dickhead; an aggressive or objectionable idiot").
Goddammit! I give you peckers an inch and you automatically take a mile […]
2013, Sean Moore, "Sat Phone Black Op" in Outside the Wire, 41
USabbreviationclippingClipping of peckerhead (“an electric motor's junction or terminal connection box, where power cords are connected to the winding leads”).
Synonyms: pothead