Word: pecker Part of Speech: noun Etymology: From Middle English pekker, equivalent to peck (“to pick at something in the manner of a bird”) + -er (“forming agent nouns”). Pronunciation: /ˈpɛkə(ɹ)/ 1. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill, particularly Example: Two studies of British civil servants, for example, suggest that those at the top of the heap are less stressed than those near the bottom. Work on other species, too, indicates that when it comes to pecking orders, the peckees are more stressed than the peckers. 2. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: regional, uncommon Example: The women with short peckers or parers,... of a foote long and about fiue inches in breadth: doe onely breake the vpper part of the ground to rayse vp the weedes, grasse, & old stubbes of corne stalkes with their rootes... For their corne,... with a pecker they make a hole, wherein they put foure graines. Example: Let sturdy youths their pointed peckers ply, Till the rais'd roots loose on the surface lie. 3. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: uncommon Example: The upper end of the finger o carries a "pecker" p, which consists of a hardened steel piece with a V edge. This pecker is engaged by any one of several steps or notches in a stepped block m carried by the rocking lever l. 4. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: obsolete, uncommon Example: The shuttle... receives its motion from the peckers connected with cords pulled by the pecking lever. Example: When the shaft [of the draw-boy] rocks from side to side of the machine, it will carry the pecker... with it. 5. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: historical, uncommon Example: Click, click, click, the pecker is at work. Example: Pecker, the small cylindrical pin which rises and falls in scanning the holes punched in a slip corresponding to the coding of the message. 6. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: US, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, historical, regional, uncommon Example: Rice mills, called pecker, cog, and water mills... The first... so called, from the pestle's striking... in the manner of a wood pecker. Example: 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’. 7. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Example: The Titmouse, and the Peckers hungry Brood. Example: By far the greater number of modern birds belong to the... orders of the perchers, the peckers, and the birds of prey. 8. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: US, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, colloquial, regional, usually Example: The pecker was esteemed a sacred and divine bird. Example: I've been feeding several downy ’peckers from my short-perched tubes for years. 9. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: UK, obsolete, regional Example: He's a rare pecker. Example: Peck... A hearty eater is generally called ‘a rare pecker’. 10. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: UK, regional Example: Pecker, a bird's bill Example: Q. What does a bird peck its food up with?... [Wiltshire] Beak, pecker. 11. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill Labels: US, regional, slang Example: The penis... pecker. Example: Ought to stand on Times Square with my pecker in my hand and piss in the gutter. 12. A nose. Labels: UK, broadly, colloquial 13. Spirits, nerve, courage. Labels: UK, broadly, colloquial Example: Mr. King... misstated the fact in saying that he had put a piece of lighted paper to the master's nose while asleep in that house; it was his hot pipe that he applied to the sleeper's nostrils, at the same time crying: Come, old chap, keep your pecker up. Example: Pecker, ‘keep your Pecker up’,... literally, keep your beak and head well up, ‘never say die’. 14. Short for peckerwood ("whitey; white trash") Labels: abbreviation, alt-of, derogatory, in-plural, slang Example: These peckers know that as well as me. Example: Those cats wouldn't let us get five feet from the Y.M.C.A. Like real peckers, they'd say, ‘If I had you down South.’ 15. Short for peckerhead ("dickhead; an aggressive or objectionable idiot"). Labels: abbreviation, alt-of, derogatory, in-plural, slang Example: Goddammit! I give you peckers an inch and you automatically take a mile […] 16. Clipping of peckerhead (“an electric motor's junction or terminal connection box, where power cords are connected to the winding leads”). Labels: US, abbreviation, alt-of, clipping