kipper
Part of speech: noun
verb
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: cooking
fishing
food
government
hobbies
lifestyle
military
naval
navy
politics
war
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.
Inflected forms:
form: kippers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: kippers
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: kippering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: kippered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: kippered
pos: verb
tags: past
form: more kipper
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most kipper
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: A split, salted and smoked herring or salmon.
pos: noun
gloss: A male salmon after spawning.
pos: noun
gloss: A patrol to protect fishing boats in the Irish and North Seas against attack from the air.
pos: noun
examples: Kipper, I discovered, was airman's slang for a fishing boat. The chief function of this particular station was the escorting of convoys and fishing fleets, and the section which had the latter duty to perform was known as the ‘Kipper Patrol’.
Kipper-kites, aircraft engaged on convoy escort duties over the North Sea and usually giving protection to the fishing-vessels.
gloss: A torpedo.
pos: noun
tags: UK
slang
examples: As she was only crawling along I aimed my first ‘kipper’ just a fraction ahead of her bows.
I evaluate its firing power at eighteen torpedoes—I think kipper is a distressing piece of naval slang—in thirty minutes.
'Fancy running the risk of getting a kipper [a torpedo] to go with his grub.'
gloss: An Englishman who has moved to Australia.
pos: noun
tags: Australia
slang
examples: 1 Kipper, Englishman
An able seaman on a kipper warship called the Eagle.
Quite often they [sc. English immigrants in Australia] are referred to as Kippers.
You kippers—no guts and two faces—are only strong under the armpits... What about the east of Suez caper, eh?
gloss: A young Aboriginal man who has been initiated into to the rights of manhood.
pos: noun
tags: Australia
examples: With these weapons the natives invest their young men at the age of from fourteen to sixteen years... These young men are then called kippers, and for the first time enjoy the privilege of taking an active part in the fight.
Around us sat ‘Kippers’, i.e. ‘hobbledehoy blacks’.
A ceremony at which the young men..receive the rank of warriors and are henceforth called Kippers.
gloss: A fool.
pos: noun
examples: Don't push so, 'Liza; you're a-knockin' my 'at off, yer silly kipper!'
'Marriage during the Emergency isn't for me. I think of Alyson Carew. But carrying on with another officer's wife, well, separated wife; won't it affect my career?' 'Don't be a silly kipper.'
Why didn't he go to the May Island, the silly kipper that he was, and bring us all back a nice wee lass instead of you, you nasty brat!'
gloss: A child or young person.
pos: noun
tags: endearing
examples: Half-a-dozen dreadfully common young bicyclists were commenting on her discomfiture with delighted exclamations of ‘Giddy old Kipper’, ‘Sweet Seventeen’, ‘Cheero, Maudie—you'll win!’
If you're enterprizing enough to climb one of the trees christened by usage ‘The Kipper's Tree’, which hardly needs to be translated into plainer terms.
A chap who has got duck's disease is most often labelled ‘Tich’... Alternatively: ankle biter,..kipper, microbe, midge, [etc.].
gloss: The vagina.
pos: noun
tags: UK
slang
gloss: To prepare (a herring or similar fish) by splitting, salting, and smoking.
pos: verb
examples: There was kippered salmon, and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis[…]
gloss: To damage or treat with smoke.
pos: verb
tags: broadly
examples: "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.
“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.
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.
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.
gloss: To dry out with heat or harsh chemicals; to desiccate.
pos: verb
examples: 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.
The beach was littered with palm-thatch umbrellas and half-naked, kippering bodies, and the Marina packed with seagoing craft of every description.
He taught us to soak our feet with meths and pot permang , kippering them hard and black , preventing blisters.
Even the smell of aviation fuel from departing aircraft would be better than being kippered in here.
gloss: To drink or give a drink of alcohol, especially to intoxication.
pos: verb
examples: No man should appear at his day's labors unless well kippered. May I kipper you, madam ”
Come over and have a drink. […] I'm half kippered myself.
'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.
gloss: To punish by spanking or caning.
pos: verb
examples: Where of old, with awful mysteries and diabolic din, They “kippered” adolescents in the presence of their kin
He's liable to get himself kippered on something hairbrained.
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.
gloss: To lead astray or frame; to cause to get into trouble.
pos: verb
examples: 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.
(see title)
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.
How he'd specialised in kippering a long line of informants, only to get totally kippered himself by this very same tom.
gloss: To utterly defeat or humiliate.
pos: verb
examples: Were the missing crewmen kippered by a squid?
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.
Reviewing himself, Fisher writes with characteristic wryness: 'I think he's a Romantic, gutted and kippered by two centuries' hard knocks.'
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.
That’s how they got Al Capone, you know: the taxman kippered him up.
gloss: Out of season.
pos: adj
tags: especially
examples: These were kipper salmon, and an acquaintance of mine living at Burton Rowbottom who was trolling for pike at Yoxall, near to King's Bromley, got a run, five years ago, and caught a beautiful salmon weighting 25 lbs.
the milner of Brignall for that he doth usually keep in the back beck a fishlock in the river called Gill Beck, below his mill and the forebeck of another fishlock [sic] above the mill, whereby he taketh and destroyeth much fish, to wit —routs, at his pleasure, and taketh, etc. divers fish when they are kipper and out of season;
Walton next tells us that the he-salmon is usually bigger than the spawner; that he is more kipper and less able to endure a winter in the fresh water than she is, yet she is, at that time of looking less kipper and better, as watery and as bad meat.'
Three weeks ago 25 per cent of the salmon running were kipper salmon.
gloss: Very wide, shaped like a kipper.
pos: adj
examples: Blades initiated a regeneration in modern British tailoring that from the mid-sixties began by flirting somewhat uneasily with the hippie style -- its most flamboyant exponent being Michael Fish, who opened premises in Piccadilly in 1966, introducing the kipper tie , Russian-style side-fastening tunics, see-through shirts and mini skirts for men.
The trousers became more flared, the ties more kipper, and, the crowning glory (at least I thought so), was thatI was the first in my department to sport a pink shirt.
Dad bought a red Scotch plaid tie, very near to 'kipper' size, but mum was still wearing flared skirts below the knee.
Wide lapels, but not too wide – this wasn't 1973 any more for Christ's sake – a three-button waistband on the flared trousers, not too flared, platform shoes, not ridiculously high, kipper tie, not too kipper.
Derived words: dead as a kipper
done up like a kipper
flip the kipper
kipperer
kipperish
kipperless
kipper tie
kipper time
stitched up like a kipper
Translations: