sicker

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsɪkɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɪkə(ɹ)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Etymology 1

From Middle English siker, sikker, sykkere, secre, seccre, from Old English sēocra (“sicker”), equivalent to sick +‎ -er.

Adjective

sicker

1. comparative form of sick: more sick.

Etymology 2

From Middle English siker, from Old English sicer, sicor, from Proto-West Germanic *sikur (“free, secure”), from Latin sēcūrus (“secure”, literally “without care”). Doublet of sure and secure.

Alternative forms

• siker, siccer, siccar

Adjective

sicker

1. (obsolete outside dialects) Certain.

   I'm sicker that he's not home.

2. (obsolete outside dialects) Secure, safe.

   To walk a sicker path

   • 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “September. Ægloga Nona.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC, folio 36, recto:

     But ſicker ſo it is, as the bꝛight ſtarre / Seemeth ay greater, when it is farre:

   • 1880, L.B. Walford, “Dick Netherby”, in Good Words‎^[1], volume 22, Alexander Strahan and Company, page 774:

     And here was we made sicker than he was wi' you […]

   • 1896, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, chapter XVII, in The Raiders: Being Some Passages in the Life of John Faa, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt‎^[2], Macmillan and Company, page 125:

     I'm as great on the side o' the law as it's siccar to be in thae uncertain times.

Adverb

sicker

1. (obsolete outside dialects) Certainly.
2. (obsolete outside dialects) Securely.

Derived terms

• sickerly
• sickerhood
• sickerness

Etymology 3

From Middle English *sikeren (attested only as sikeriez (“(it) trickles, (it) leaks, (it) oozes”)), from Old English sicerian (“to ooze, seep”), from Proto-West Germanic *sikarōn, from Proto-Germanic *sikarōną (“to trickle”), from Proto-Germanic *sīką (“slow running water”). Cognate with German Low German sickern (“to seep”), German sickern (“to seep, trickle”). Akin also to English sitch.

Alternative forms

• sigger, zigger

Verb

sicker (third-person singular simple present sickers, present participle sickering, simple past and past participle sickered)

1. (intransitive, literal, figurative) To percolate, trickle, or seep; to ooze, as water through a crack.
   • 1917, Gerhart Hauptmann, Ludwig Lewisohn, The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, volume 7, page 185:

     No drop of water fell from the hot blue
     Or sickered from the skeleton of earth.

   • 1926, Jakob Wassermann, Wedlock, volume 10, page 217:

     This cause had sickered into his soul; it had been branded upon his forehead somehow, by some hand; he knew not how nor by whom.

   • 1943, Acta minerologica, petrographica, volumes 1-11, page 17:

     The solution steadily sickered through the debris and the sampling of the solutions could be carried out without taking the equipment into pieces.

References

• “sicker”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “sicker”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “sicker”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• Reicks, Rickes, Riecks, crikes, ickers, scrike

German

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Verb

sicker

1. inflection of sickern:
   1. first-person singular present
   2. singular imperative

Middle English

Adjective

sicker

1. Alternative form of siker

Adverb

sicker

1. Alternative form of siker