2. 木登り用の強い爪と固い尾を持ち、昆虫を捕るために木に穴をあけるノミのように固いくちばしを持つ鳥(bird with strong claws and a stiff tail adapted for climbing and a hard chisel-like bill for boring into wood for insects)
(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.
1807, Thomas Johnson, British Patent № 3023 (1856), section 5:
The shuttle... receives its motion from the peckers connected with cords pulled by the pecking lever.
1878, Alfred Barlow, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, x. 136:
When the shaft [of the draw-boy] rocks from side to side of the machine, it will carry the pecker... with it.
(telegraphy, historical) A kind of V-shaped telegraphic relay.
1858 June 13, H.C.F. Jenkin, letter in Papers (1887), volume I, page lxxxvi:
Click, click, click, the pecker is at work.
1940, Chambers's Technical Dictionary, 621/1:
Pecker, the small cylindrical pin which rises and falls in scanning the holes punched in a slip corresponding to the coding of the message.
(US regional, historical)Clipping of pecker mill, a rice mill.
1802, J. Drayton, A view of South Carolina, as respects her natural and civil concerns, page 121:
Rice mills, called pecker, cog, and water mills... The first... so called, from the pestle's striking... in the manner of a wood pecker.
1949, S. C. Murray, This Our Land: the Story of the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, page 41:
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’.
(zoology) A bird, particularly a member of the group including the woodpeckers, flowerpeckers, oxpeckers, and berrypeckers.
1697, Publius Virgilius Maro, translated by John Dryden, Georgics, section IV:
The Titmouse, and the Peckers hungry Brood.
1884 January, George Allen, Longman's Magazine, page 294:
By far the greater number of modern birds belong to the... orders of the perchers, the peckers, and the birds of prey.
(zoology, usually colloquial or US regional)Clipping of woodpecker (Picidae).
1883, Jacob Grimm, translated by J.S. Stallybrass, Teutonic Mythology, volume III, page 973:
The pecker was esteemed a sacred and divine bird.
1980 January 20, Washington Post, m1:
I've been feeding several downy ’peckers from my short-perched tubes for years.
(UK regional, obsolete) An eater, a diner.
1862, C.C. Robinson, The Dialect of Leeds & Its Neighbourhood, page 383:
He's a rare pecker.
1873, Slang Dictionary:
Peck... A hearty eater is generally called ‘a rare pecker’.
1894, Mrs. H. Ward, Marcella, II. iv. v. 476:
But I've been better iver since, an' beginnin' to eat my vittles, too, though I'm never no great pecker.
(UK regional) A bird's beak.
Synonyms:bill, neb, nib
1891, G. Sweetman, A Glossary of Words used by the rural population in the parish and neighbourhood of Wincanton, Somerset:
Pecker, a bird's bill
1967, H. Orton & M. F. Wakelin, A Survey of English dialects B, volume 4:
Q. What does a bird peck its food up with?... [Wiltshire] Beak, pecker.
(chiefly US, regional, slang) A penis; cock, dick.
1902, J. S. Farmer, W. E. Henley, Slang and Its Analogues, London, V. 289/2: