Word.ws English Dictionary

bicker

/ˈbɪkə/US/ˈbɪkɚ/

bicker verb: to quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.

Verb

bicker (third-person singular simple present bickers, present participle bickering, simple past and past participle bickered)

  1. To quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.
    • They bickered about dinner every evening.
    • petty things about which men cark and bickera. 1678 (date written), Isaac Barrow, “(please specify the chapter name or sermon number)”, in The Works of Dr. Isaac Barrow. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to VII), London: A[braham] J[ohn]...
  2. To brawl or move tremulously, quiver, shimmer (of a water stream, light, flame, etc.)
    • Mean time unnumber'd glittering Streamlets play'd, / And hurled every-where their Waters ſheen; / That, as they bicker'd through the ſunny Glade, / Though reſtleſs ſtill themſelves, a lulling Murmur made.1748, James Thomson, “Canto I”, in The Castle of Indolence: […], London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, stanza III, page 2
    • I come from haunts of coot and hern, / I make a sudden sally, / And sparkle out among the fern, / To bicker down a valley.1886, Tennyson, The Brook
  3. To patter.
  4. To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight.
    • And at the field fought before Bebriacum, ere the battailes joyned, tvvo Ægles had a conflict and bickered together in all their fights: and vvhen the one of them was foyled and overcome, a third came at the very inſtant from the ſunne riſing and chaſed the Victreſſe avvay.1606, Caius [i.e., Gaius] Suetonius Tranquillus, “The Historie of Flavius Vespatianus Augustus”, in Philêmon Holland, transl., The Historie of Twelve Cæsars Emperours of Rome. […], London: […]...

Noun (1)

bicker (countable and uncountable, plural bickers)

  1. (countable) A skirmish; an encounter.
  2. (Scotland, countable, obsolete) A fight with stones between two parties of boys.
    • Even if he did not take part in the fighting himself, he was no doubt familiar with those who had been taught, ass Darsie Latimer was by Alan Fairford, to "smoke a cobbler, spin a lozen, head a bicker, and hold the bannets" - in other words, to break a window, head a skirmish with stones, and hold...1773, R. Ford, “Biographical Introduction”, in The Poetical Works of Robert Ferguson
  3. A wrangle; also, a noise, as in angry contention.
  4. The process by which selective eating clubs at Princeton University choose new members.
    • Bicker process varies by club, and there are often concerns of the rights of female students during bicker […]2005, Alison Fraser, Princeton University: Princeton, New Jersey, College Prowler, Inc, →ISBN, page 41

Noun (2)

bicker (plural bickers)

  1. (Scotland) A wooden drinking-cup or other dish.
    • …the liquors were handed around in great fulness, the ale in large wooden bickers, and the brandy in capacious horns of oxen.1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford, published 2010, page 6

Proper noun capitalized: Bicker

Bicker

  1. A surname.

bicker meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

bicker in Urdu

جھگڑنا, لرزنا

bicker in Bengali

ঝগড়া করা, কথা কাটাকাটি করা

bicker in Malayalam

argue, squabble, quarrel
കശപിശയുണ്ടാക്കുക, നിസ്സാരസംഗതിക്കുവേണ്ടി വഴക്കിടുക, ശണ്ഠകൂടുക, ചില്ലറക്കാര്യങ്ങളിൽ ശണ്ഠകൂടുക, കടികൂടുക, വാപേശുക

bicker in Kannada

ಜಗಳವಾಡು, ಕಾದಾಡು, ಕಚ್ಚಾಡು, ಮಿನುಗು, ಹೊಳೆ

Synonyms of bicker

Forms of bicker

Verb
third-person singular presentbickers
present participlebickering
past participlebickered
pastbickered
Noun
pluralbickers

Past tense of bicker: bickered

Origin of bicker

From Middle English bikeren (“to attack”), from Middle Dutch bicken (“to stab, thrust, attack”) + -er (frequentative suffix), from Old Dutch *bikken, from Proto-West Germanic *bikkjan, from Proto-Germanic *bikjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“to smash, break”). See also Old English becca (“pickax”), Dutch bikken (“to hack”), German picken (“to peck, pick at”), Old Norse bikkja (“to plunge into water”); compare also German Low German bickern (“to nibble, gnaw”).

From Scots bicker, from Middle English biker. Doublet of beaker.

Words formed from bicker

Words that rhyme with bicker

15 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bicker

What does bicker mean?
Bicker means to quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.
What is bicker in Urdu?
Bicker in Urdu is جھگڑنا, لرزنا. See Bicker meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is bicker?
Bicker can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bicker?
Bicker is pronounced /ˈbɪkɚ/ (US).
What is the past tense of bicker?
The past tense of bicker is bickered.

Words near bicker in the dictionary

  1. Bickell
  2. Bickells
  3. Bickels
  4. Bickenhill
  5. Bickenhill and Marston Green
  6. bicker
  7. bicker like a married couple
  8. bicker like an old married couple
  9. Bickerdike
  10. bickered
  11. bickered like a married couple

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bicker (page history and authors); Bicker (page history and authors); bicker (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bicker (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bicker (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bicker (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bicker.wav.

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