peckers

Noun

pecker (plural peckers)

1. Someone who or something that pecks, striking or piercing in the manner of a bird's beak or bill, particularly
   • 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.2003 October 18, “Stress Test”, in The Economist
2. (regional, uncommon) Any tool used in a pecking fashion, particularly kinds of hoes or pickaxes.
   • 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...1588, Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, sig. C2
3. (uncommon) Any machine or machine part moving in a pecking fashion, particularly
   • 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.1922, Whittaker's Mechanical Engineer's Pocket Book, page 368
4. (obsolete, uncommon) A picker, a shuttle-driver: the device which moves backwards and forwards in the shuttle-box to drive the shuttle through the warp.
   • The shuttle... receives its motion from the peckers connected with cords pulled by the pecking lever.1807, Thomas Johnson, British Patent № 3023 (1856), section 5
5. (historical, uncommon) A kind of V-shaped telegraphic relay.
   • Click, click, click, the pecker is at work.1858 June 13, H.C.F. Jenkin, letter in Papers (1887), volume I, page lxxxvi
6. A bird, particularly a member of the group including the woodpeckers, flowerpeckers, oxpeckers, and berrypeckers.
   • The Titmouse, and the Peckers hungry Brood.1697, Publius Virgilius Maro, translated by John Dryden, Georgics, section IV

See all 11 meanings of pecker