Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A cautious gambler.
- noun A person regarded as petty or stingy.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who makes small bets all over the lay-out. See
pike , intransitive verb, 2. - noun On the stock-exchange, a professional speculator. See the extract.
- noun One who uses a pike or pointed implement; specifically, in the United States, in ice-harvesting, one who thus controls the movement of cakes of ice.
- noun A tramp; a vagrant.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun military, historical A
soldier armed with apike , apikeman . - noun One who
bets orgambles only with small amounts ofmoney . - noun A
stingy person; acheapskate . - noun An
amateur . - noun Australia, New Zealand, slang One who refuses to go out with friends, or leaves a party early.
- noun Australia, New Zealand, slang One who
pikes (quits or backs out of a promise).
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word piker.
Examples
-
I've always thought Stevie was a kind of piker, that is that she would say she was going to do a thing, and then from sheer laziness not do it.
Turn About Eleanor F. Graham [Illustrator] Cootes
-
(_Trying to explain_) No, no -- a piker is a tin horn.
The Ghost Breaker A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts Charles Goddard 1915
-
It would have horrified him to be called a piker, for his instincts were really lavish, and the economical habit an achievement in which he took a resentful pride.
The Sisters-In-Law Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902
-
I do not begrudge him is wealth (except he is known as a piker to boot); I excoriate the both of them for their two-faced-ness.
GraniteGrok Skip 2008
-
Or was he a "piker"; a little fellow, the victim of his own fears and vanities?
100\%: the Story of a Patriot Upton Sinclair 1923
-
Or was he a "piker"; a little fellow, the victim of his own fears and vanities?
-
American is lavish, hates to stint, detests being a "piker", says, "Oh, what's the difference; it will all be the same in a hundred years," but kicks himself mentally afterwards.
The Nervous Housewife Abraham Myerson 1914
-
It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.
American Adventures A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' Julian Street 1913
-
He had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent native claret where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to appear a "piker" in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler.
The Sisters-In-Law Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton 1902
-
He later upped his donation to $400,000 so he wouldn't look like a "piker" and "to stay in the game" because he said that this year's "stunning" donations were well ahead of what they collected last year.
Media Matters for America - Limbaugh Wire S.S.U. 2010
xntrek commented on the word piker
Someone who fails to meet the expectations they themselves set (e.g. go out, drink, party).
Is especially relevant whereby they fail to inform anyone of the failure to go/meet/etc or do so at the very last minute.
see also piking
May 10, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word piker
"When one investigator in New York started to negotiate the terms of leaving a bar with a woman late at night, she demanded that he buy her a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey. And while he was it it, could he come with her to the butcher to pay an outstanding bill? (It never seems to occur to the investigators that the women they write up might have recognized them for what they were, and decided to mess around.)
'I told her all the butcher shops were closed now,' he wrote, 'and I didn't care to travel around from store to store, she got sore at me and called me a piker and told me to beat it.'"
Labor of Love by Moira Weigel, p 22
August 31, 2016