bicker

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: From Scots bicker, from Middle English biker. Doublet of beaker.

1. A wooden drinking-cup or other dish.

   “…the liquors were handed around in great fulness, the ale in large wooden bickers, and the brandy in capacious horns of oxen.”

verb

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *bikjaną Proto-West Germanic *bikkjan Old Dutch *bikken Middle Dutch bickenbor. Proto-Germanic *-urōną Proto-West Germanic *-urōn Old English -erian Middle English -eren Middle English bikeren English bicker From Middle English bikeren (“to attack”), from Middle Dutch bicken (“to stab, thrust, attack”) + -er (frequentative suffix), from Old Dutch *bikken, from Proto-West Germanic *bikkjan, from Proto-Germanic *bikjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“to smash, break”). See also Old English becca (“pickax”), Dutch bikken (“to hack”), German picken (“to peck, pick at”), Old Norse bikkja (“to plunge into water”); compare also German Low German bickern (“to nibble, gnaw”).

1. To quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.

   “They bickered about dinner every evening.”

   “petty things about which men cark and bicker”

2. To brawl or move tremulously, quiver, shimmer (of a water stream, light, flame, etc.)

   “Mean time unnumber'd glittering Streamlets play'd, / And hurled every-where their Waters ſheen; / That, as they bicker'd through the ſunny Glade, / Though reſtleſs ſtill themſelves, a lulling Murmur made.”

   “I come from haunts of coot and hern, / I make a sudden sally, / And sparkle out among the fern, / To bicker down a valley.”

3. To patter.
4. To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight.

   “And at the field fought before Bebriacum, ere the battailes joyned, tvvo Ægles had a conflict and bickered together in all their fights: and vvhen the one of them was foyled and overcome, a third came at the very inſtant from the ſunne riſing and chaſed the Victreſſe avvay.”