Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To neigh softly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A neigh; also, a vulgar laugh.
  • noun One who or that which nicks.
  • noun One of a company of brawlers who in the early part of the eighteenth century roamed about London by night, amusing themselves with breaking people's windows.
  • noun A kind of marble for children's play.
  • To neigh.
  • To laugh with half-suppressed catches of the voice; snigger.
  • noun A demon of the water; a water-sprite; a nix or nixy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Cant One of the night brawlers of London formerly noted for breaking windows with half-pence.
  • noun The cutting lip which projects downward at the edge of a boring bit and cuts a circular groove in the wood to limit the size of the hole that is bored.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK, slang Pound sterling.
  • noun obsolete, slang One of the night brawlers of London formerly noted for breaking windows with halfpence.
  • noun The cutting lip which projects downward at the edge of a boring bit and cuts a circular groove in the wood to limit the size of the hole that is bored.
  • noun A soft neighing sound characteristic of a horse.
  • verb To make a soft neighing sound characteristic of a horse.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the characteristic sounds made by a horse
  • verb make a characteristic sound, of a horse

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps alteration of neigher, nicher, frequentative of neigh.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

nick +‎ -er

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Examples

  • The terms nicker for a one-pound note and half a nicker for a ten-shilling note are New Zealand expressions that arrived in Britain, and they were also widely used by counterfeiters in the underworld.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIX No 4 1993

  • -- A tropical plant, bearing the seeds known as nicker nuts, or bonduc nuts.

    Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture William Saunders 1861

  • Brown's "nicker" without acknowledgment, and lost it.

    Tom, Dick and Harry Talbot Baines Reed 1872

  • He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of

    CHAPTER XXV 2010

  • A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match between the pages of the frog book, and, while Oh

    CHAPTER I 2010

  • My proceeded partly to dress his master in bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly on his side, stared out in the direction of the nicker.

    CHAPTER I 2010

  • The air was heavy with lilac fragrance, and from the distance, as he rode between the lilac hedges, Graham heard the throaty nicker of Mountain

    CHAPTER XVIII 2010

  • Her approach elicited another resonant nicker from Rune, and when she set the basket at his feet he eagerly tore into the grain.

    Raven Speak Diane Lee Wilson 2010

  • From far, far above came a familiar nicker, one shadowed with worry.

    Raven Speak Diane Lee Wilson 2010

  • Between his labored breaths, he managed a soft nicker, a depositing of his trust in her.

    Raven Speak Diane Lee Wilson 2010

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