sicker

English

Pronunciation

• 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-Germanic *sikrōną (“to trickle”), from Proto-Germanic *sīką (“slow running water”). Akin to sitch.

Alternative forms

• sigger, zigger

Verb

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

1. (mining, UK, dialect) To percolate, trickle, or ooze, as water through a crack.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “sicker”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References

• “sicker”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “sicker”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

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

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German

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Verb

sicker

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

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Middle English

Adjective

sicker

1. Alternative form of siker

Adverb

sicker

1. Alternative form of siker