piker
Americannoun
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a person who does anything in a contemptibly small or cheap way.
-
a stingy, tight-fisted person; tightwad.
- Synonyms:
- skinflint, penny pincher, cheapskate
-
a person who gambles, speculates, etc., in a small, cautious way.
noun
-
a wild bullock
-
a useless person; failure
-
a lazy person; shirker
-
a mean person
Etymology
Origin of piker
1275–1325; Middle English: petty thief, equivalent to pik ( en ) to pick 1 + -er 1; compare dial. (N England, Scots, Hiberno-English ) pike to pick 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Michael Bloomberg, another SPC, with his own media empire, makes Schultz look like a piker by comparison.
From The Guardian • Feb. 16, 2019
In California’s 39th District, it makes her a piker.
From Slate • May 31, 2018
But even he was a piker compared with wartime presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
From Washington Post • Dec. 8, 2014
The Rapture is a piker in this film; of its reported $16 million budget, roughly $15 million appears to have gone to Cage on a dare that he maintain a straight face.
From Chicago Tribune • Oct. 2, 2014
All the places where I worked was piker concerns.
From The Competitive Nephew by Glass, Montague
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
