Definition of "pecker"

Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill, particularly:  quotations

1. (uncommon or regional) Any tool used in a pecking fashion, particularly kinds of hoes or pickaxes.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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

   • Pecker, small pickaxe for cutting furze.

     1948, M. Carbery, E. Grey, Hertfordshire Heritage, page 120

2. (uncommon) Any machine or machine part moving in a pecking fashion, particularly:  quotations

   Quotations

   • 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

   1. (weaving, obsolete) A picker, a shuttle-driver: the device which moves backwards and forwards in the shuttle-box to drive the shuttle through the warp.  quotations

      Quotations

      • 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

      • 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

   2. (telegraphy, historical) A kind of V-shaped telegraphic relay.  quotations

      Quotations

      • Click, click, click, the pecker is at work.

        1858 June 13, H.C.F. Jenkin, letter in Papers (1887), volume I, page lxxxvi

      • 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

   3. (US regional, historical) Clipping of pecker mill, a rice mill.  quotations

      Quotations

      • 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

      • 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

3. (zoology) A bird, particularly a member of the group including the woodpeckers, flowerpeckers, oxpeckers, and berrypeckers.  quotations

   Quotations

   • The Titmouse, and the Peckers hungry Brood.

     1697, Publius Virgilius Maro, translated by John Dryden, Georgics, section IV

   • 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

   1. (zoology, usually colloquial or US regional) Clipping of woodpecker (Picidae).  quotations

      Quotations

      • The pecker was esteemed a sacred and divine bird.

        1883, Jacob Grimm, translated by J.S. Stallybrass, Teutonic Mythology, volume III, page 973

      • I've been feeding several downy ’peckers from my short-perched tubes for years.

        1980 January 20, Washington Post, m1

4. (UK regional, obsolete) An eater, a diner.  quotations

   Quotations

   • He's a rare pecker.

     1862, C.C. Robinson, The Dialect of Leeds & Its Neighbourhood, page 383

   • 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

5. (UK regional) A bird's beak or bill.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • 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

   • 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

6. (chiefly US, regional, slang) A penis; cock, dick.  quotations

   Quotations

   • The penis... pecker.

     1902, J. S. Farmer, W. E. Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, London, V. 289/2

   • 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 […]; republished New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1963, 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

(UK colloquial, by extension of the sense ‘beak’) A nose.  examples

(UK colloquial, by extension, from the expression ‘keep one's pecker up’) Spirits, nerve, courage.  quotations  examples

(chiefly in the plural, derogatory slang) Short for peckerwood ("whitey; white trash")  quotations

(chiefly in the plural, derogatory slang) Short for peckerhead ("dickhead; an aggressive or objectionable idiot").  quotations

(US) Clipping of peckerhead ("an electric motor's junction or terminal connection box, where power cords are connected to the winding leads").  examples