nipper
/ˈnɪpə(ɹ)/
nipper noun: one who, or that which, nips.
Noun
nipper (plural nippers)
- One who, or that which, nips.
- Watt saw the little movements of the stuff, the little bulgings and crumplings, and the sudden indrawings, where it was nipped, between forefinger and thumb probably, for those are the nippers.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC
- Any of various devices (as pincers) for nipping.
- A child.
- Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, part...
- No, this is not a creche: nippers should not be running around, fighting under the pool table or generally creating havoc (this applies to dogs, too).2018 June 6, Tony Naylor, “The new rules of pub etiquette: don't flirt with bar staff or steal the glasses”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- A child aged from 5 to 13 in the Australian surf life-saving clubs.
- SLSA has become a multi-million dollar enterprise comprising 262 clubs located around the Australian coastline, with 100000 members, which included thousands of juniors or ‘nippers’, as they were more commonly known.2003, Some Like It Hot: The Beach As a Cultural Dimension
- It is the first day of training for a group of ten ‘little nippers’ (novice surf life-savers). An assortment of children expectantly hover in the clubhouse.2008, Tania Cassidy, Robyn L. Jones, Paul Potrac, Understanding Sports Coaching: The Social, Cultural and Pedagogical Foundations of Coaching Practice
- A boy working as a navvies' assistant.
- A mosquito.
- One of four foreteeth in a horse.
- A satirist.
- […] ready backbiters, sore nippers, and spiteful reporters privily of good men.a. 1569 (date written), Roger Ascham, edited by Margaret Ascham, The Scholemaster: Or Plaine and Perfite Way of Teaching Children, to Vnderstand, Write, and Speake, the Latin Tong, […], London: […]...
- A pickpocket; a young or petty thief.
- Synonyms:
- cutpurse, dip, dipper, foist, footpad, gonoph, nip, pickpocket, pickpocketer, pickpurse
- A fish, the cunner.
- A European crab (Polybius henslowii).
- The claws of a crab or lobster.
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- A young bluefish.
- A machine used by a ticket inspector to stamp passengers' tickets.
- The railway ticket nipper has the identification number of the conductor on it […]1908, Transport World, volume 24, page 319
- One of a pair of automatically locking handcuffs.
- One of the gloves or mittens worn by fishermen to protect their hands from cold and abrasion.
- Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "nippers," the woolen circlets supposed to protect it.1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous
- Today, there are new synthetic materials to protect the hands, but until recently, fishermen wore nippers—thick rubber gloves with cotton lining.1997, Mark Kurlansky, Cod, page 112
Verb
nipper (third-person singular simple present nippers, present participle nippering, simple past and past participle nippered)
Proper noun capitalized: Nipper
Nipper (plural Nippers)
- A surname.
nipper meaning in Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
nipper in Urdu
- چمٹی, دسپنا, سنسی
nipper in Bengali
- চিমটা
nipper in Malayalam
- കടിച്ചെടുക്കുന്ന ആൾ, ഞണ്ടുവർഗ്ഗത്തിൽപെട്ട ജീവികളുടെ നഖം
Examples of nipper in a sentence
- Every club around Australia offers a Nippers programme.2009, Didgeridoos and Didgeridon'ts: A Brit 's Guide to Moving Your Life Down Under:
- The Nippers program, for children aged five to thirteen, promotes water safety skills and confidence in a safe beach environment2011 October 6, “Nipper numbers exceed 60,000”, in Australian for life, archived from the original on 21 Mar 2012:
- Of our movement’s 153,000 members, over 58,500 are nippers (5-13 years).2013 September 5, Eve Jeffery, “Nippers season begins on the north coast”, in Echonetdaily:
- Within weeks across Australia, weekends at beaches will soon be dominated by junior lifesavers – known as “nippers” – swimming and board-riding along thousands of kilometres of coastline.2025 September 6, Ben Doherty, “‘Every surfer feeling this’: tight-knit community mourns fatal shark attack on Sydney’s northern beaches”...
Synonyms of nipper
1 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of nipper
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | nippers |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | nippers |
| present participle | nippering |
| past participle | nippered |
| past | nippered |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Nippers |
Origin of nipper
From nip + -er.
Words formed from nipper
Words that rhyme with nipper
5 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about nipper
- What does nipper mean?
- Nipper means one who, or that which, nips.
- What is nipper in Urdu?
- Nipper in Urdu is چمٹی, دسپنا, سنسی. See Nipper meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use nipper in a sentence?
- Every club around Australia offers a Nippers programme.
- What part of speech is nipper?
- Nipper can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce nipper?
- Nipper is pronounced /ˈnɪpə(ɹ)/.
- What is the plural of nipper?
- The plural of nipper is nippers.
Words near nipper in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nipper (page history and authors); Nipper (page history and authors); nipper (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nipper (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nipper (Malayalam 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-nipper.ogg.
Cite this entry: “nipper.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nipper. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.