bickerとは

意味・読み方・使い方

語源 1

From Middle English bikeren (“to attack”), from Middle Dutch bicken (“to stab, thrust, attack”) +‎ -er (frequentative suffix). Middle Dutch bicken is umtilately from Proto-Germanic *bikjaną (compare 古期英語 becca (“pickax”), Dutch bikken (“to hack”), German picken (“to peck, pick at”), Old Norse bikkja (“to plunge into water”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“to smash, break”). Compare also German Low German bickern (“to nibble, gnaw”).

動詞

bicker (三人称単数 現在形 bickers, 現在分詞 bickering, 過去形および過去分詞形 bickered)

1. To quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.

   They bickered about dinner every evening.

   • Barrow

     petty things about which men cark and bicker

2. To brawl or move tremulously, quiver, shimmer (of a water stream, light, flame, etc.)
   • XIX cent, The Brook, by Tennyson

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

   • Thomson

     They [streamlets] bickered through the sunny shade.

3. (of rain) To patter.
4. To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight.
   • Holland

     Two eagles had a conflict, and bickered together.

同意語

• wrangle
• See also Thesaurus:squabble

派生語

• bickerer

名詞

bicker (複数形 bickers)

1. A skirmish; an encounter.
2. (Scotland, obsolete) A fight with stones between two parties of boys.

   (Can we find かつ add a quotation of Jamieson to this entry?)

3. A wrangle; also, a noise, as in angry contention.

語源 2

From Scots bicker, from Middle English biker (compare beaker).

名詞

bicker (複数形 bickers)

1. (Scotland) A wooden drinking-cup or other dish.
   • 1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford 2010, p. 6:

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

Further reading

• bicker in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• bicker in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• Bicker in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)