kipper
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkɪpə(ɹ)/
rhymes: -ɪpə(ɹ)
Forms: form: kippers
form: kippering
form: kippered
form: kippered
Etymology: From Old English cypera (“male salmon”), perhaps related to Old English coper (“reddish-brown metal”) (see copper), on resemblance of color. Another theory connects it to kip (“sharp, hooked lower jaw of the male salmon in breeding season”), from Middle English kippen (“to seize, snatch”), but OED doubts this.
Senses: examples: text: There was kippered salmon, and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis[…]
ref: 1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 49, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC:
topics: cooking
food
lifestyle
glosses: To prepare (a herring or similar fish) by splitting, salting, and smoking.
examples: text: "Your own fault. Did you imagine I was going to live on a gasring, because you wouldn't have your chimney repaired?" Then Diva got a tenant in spite of the kippered bathroom, and moved to a dilapidated hovel close beside the railway line, which she got for half the rent which she received for her house.
ref: 1935, Edward Frederic Benson, The Worshipful Lucia, page 252:
text: “When I was in 23 Squadron,” Mayo said,”we had a pilot who could blow smoke through his ears.” “That doesn't make him dotty,” Goss said. “It might have kippered his brains,” Jimmy Duncan suggested.
ref: 2011, Derek Robinson, War Story:
text: So she let herself be crammed into a corner of the smelliest pub in town, slowly kippering in a haze of other people's cigarette smoke.
ref: 2012, Zoe Barnes, Just Married:
text: The gorgeous exhalation of millions of gaspers and fags and tabs and snouts and pipes and – my personal favourite– Panatelas, had kippered my walls for a century and a quarter.
ref: 2020, James Nelson Roebuck, Red Flags:
glosses: To damage or treat with smoke.
examples: text: She was the daintiest and most exquisite little figure imaginable, never did she stir out of doors without layers of veil to protect her from the kippering effects of sun and wind, and she preserved untouched by unguents or “mess” the complexion of a girl, smooth and soft and unwrinkled.
ref: 1930, E. F. Benson, As We Were - A Victorian Peep Show:
text: The beach was littered with palm-thatch umbrellas and half-naked, kippering bodies, and the Marina packed with seagoing craft of every description.
ref: 1995, Rosamunde Pilcher, Three Complete Novels, page 102:
text: He taught us to soak our feet with meths and pot permang , kippering them hard and black , preventing blisters.
ref: 2004, Trevor Clark, Good Second Class (but Not Even C.3), page 58:
text: Even the smell of aviation fuel from departing aircraft would be better than being kippered in here.
ref: 2005, David M. Addison, An Italian Journey: A Sort of Latter-Day Mini Grand Tour, page 28:
glosses: To dry out with heat or harsh chemicals; to desiccate.
examples: text: No man should appear at his day's labors unless well kippered. May I kipper you, madam ”
ref: 1995, Anne Douglas, Miss Caroline's Deception, page 106:
text: Come over and have a drink. […] I'm half kippered myself.
ref: 2009, Rex Beach, The Silver Horde:
text: 'And you keep your oath now, that you'll never drink again, Spijak?'... That's right girl that's my word. He lifts out a half finished bottle of vodka and takes a pull at it. ...and you won't be kippering none more than I can help.
ref: 2015, Michael Hastings, The Cutting of the Cloth:
glosses: To drink or give a drink of alcohol, especially to intoxication.
examples: text: Where of old, with awful mysteries and diabolic din, They “kippered” adolescents in the presence of their kin
ref: 1902, James Brunton Stephens, The Poetical Works, page 262:
text: He's liable to get himself kippered on something hairbrained.
ref: 1985, Stephen Hunter, The Spanish Gambit:
text: Right there and then, we all vowed to avoid a 'kippering' from Morris. And there was no doubt that we admired Rob for taking the beating and not to be crying his eyes out twelve hours later.
ref: 2015, Michael Volpe, Noisy at the wrong times: (Battles with myself), page 86:
glosses: To punish by spanking or caning.
examples: text: As for Mr. Mowbray you must know that he is not only the chief plotter, inventor, and spreader abroad of all these base calumnies, but he did also, like a fool, vent before his going home, to one whom he though had not been my friend, that he had taken notes of all words spoken by me in Scotland, and that he would construct and relate them to the Marquis of Hamilton, and so kipper me at the King's hands, that I should have no more pension.
ref: 1877, William Douglas Hamilton, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, page 511:
text: (see title)
ref: 2005 March 16, “Mark Seddon, 'How I was kippered by my party,'”, in The Guardian:
text: Carver had been kippered and he knew it. He'd been framed good and proper. caught redhanded. still holding on to the phone like an absolute idiot.
ref: 2010, Tom Cain, Assassin, page 206:
text: How he'd specialised in kippering a long line of informants, only to get totally kippered himself by this very same tom.
ref: 2010, Graham Hurley, Borrowed Light:
glosses: To lead astray or frame; to cause to get into trouble.
examples: text: Were the missing crewmen kippered by a squid?
ref: 2001, Rachel Wright, The True Mystery of the Mary Celeste, page 27:
text: while clearly holding a banana in front of the proposed kippering victim if he replied with a straight answer to the question then he had been "kippered", and the correct response of the kipperer was to adopt a dramatically pained expression and look away while exhaling heavily, usually following up with the phrase, "Ooh, kippered him a treat.
ref: 2004, Jonathan Blyth, Law of the Playground, page 108:
text: Reviewing himself, Fisher writes with characteristic wryness: 'I think he's a Romantic, gutted and kippered by two centuries' hard knocks.'
ref: 2007, Michael O'Neill, The All-Sustaining Air:
text: Chana Bindl, having been revived, grew distressed again at the revelation that the rooms she so scrupulously scoured had remained full of grime, while her husband stood chewing his whiskers, conflicted in his kippered heart.
ref: 2011, Steve Stern, The Frozen Rabbi, page 98:
text: That’s how they got Al Capone, you know: the taxman kippered him up.
ref: 2011, Colin MacFarlane, No Mean Glasgow, page ?:
glosses: To utterly defeat or humiliate.