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Bicker   Listen
verb
Bicker  v. i.  (past & past part. bickered; pres. part. bickering)  
1.
To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight. (Obs.) "Two eagles had a conflict, and bickered together."
2.
To contend in petulant altercation; to wrangle. "Petty things about which men cark and bicker."
3.
To move quickly and unsteadily, or with a pattering noise; to quiver; to be tremulous, like flame. "They (streamlets) bickered through the sunny shade."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bicker" Quotes from Famous Books



... about the hill, An' todlin down on Willie's mill, Setting my staff wi' a' my skill, To keep me sicker; Tho' leeward whiles, against my will, I took a bicker. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... presented his Majesty with a huge silver bowl, in token of their love and loyalty. The King seemed highly pleased with the gift, and observed to the Duke of Buckingham, loud enough to be heard by the bystanders, who reported his speech to me, 'God's santie! it's a braw bicker, Steenie, and might serve for a christening-cup, if we had need of siccan a vessel, which, Heaven be praised, we ha'e na!' After this there was a grand banquet in the town-hall; and when the heat of the day was over the King left with his train for Hoghton Tower, visiting the alum mines on ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... This race-type keeping, They saw men creeping Over the ridges, scant fodder reaping. They saw men eager Toil on the sea, though their take was meager, Plow the steep slope and trench the bog-valley, To bouts with the rock the brown nag rally. Saw their faults flaunted,— Buck-like they bicker, Love well their liquor,— But know not defeat,—hoist ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... much with us, small and great: We are undone of chatter and on dit, Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, Aspect of A., and attitude of B.— A waste of words that drive us like a sea, Mere derelict of Ourselves, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... by their aid, with their own soldiers, and the forced labour of the Britons, to have made the huge embankments, of which there are remains still existing in “The Roman Bank,” near Sutterton and Algarkirk, Bicker, and other places. The Car Dyke, skirting the Fens, on the west, some four miles from Kirkstead, was their work, and a few miles westward is Ermine Street, the great Roman highway, which stretches from Sauton on the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with his sleeve—the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker—and the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm, whizz-whizz, whizzing in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... an' tak the gate, In blast an' blaudin', rain, deil hae 't! The hale toon glintin', stane an' slate, Wi' cauld an' weet, An' to the Court, gin we 'se be late, Bicker oor feet. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ashes moulder on the plain. Rem. (You've said that once before. Say it again.) Rom. Remus, my blackguard brother, hold thy tongue. Rem. Romulus, may I be spared to see thee hung. Maidens. Alas! to see two brothers bicker thus is sad, Let's laugh and sport and turn to something glad. Mary Ann (blushing). I'll sing you a simple ballad if you like. (All shuddering). Good gracious! (Aside) Certainly, by all means. Mary Ann. How doth each naughty little lad Delight to snarl ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... maxims against the bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed state, between partial possession and full expectation, that makes every part of the body languid and lazy except ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... whiles cam wi' their pocks, Cause they kent that I liked a bicker; Sae I bartered whiles wi' the gowks, Gaed them grain for a soup o' their liquor. I had lang been accustom'd to drink, And aye when I purposed to quat it, That thing wi' its clappertie clink Said aye to me, Tak it, man, tak it. Hey for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of age, Thomas Borrow was articled for five years to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the braves of that town. Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... when were you in a stone bicker last?" quoth Randal; and I hung my head, for it was not yet six months gone since the sailors and we students were stoning ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... Sheridan showed so little capacity as a boy, that he was presented to a tutor by his mother with the complimentary accompaniment that he was an incorrigible dunce. Walter Scott was all but a dunce when a boy, always much readier for a "bicker," than apt at his lessons. At the Edinburgh University, Professor Dalzell pronounced upon him the sentence that "Dunce he was, and dunce he would remain." Chatterton was returned on his mother's hands as "a fool, of whom nothing could ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... lithe snakes turning, as bright stars burning, They bicker and beckon and call; As wild waves churning, as wild winds yearning, They flicker and ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... a row begins, a bicker between the sailmaker and bo'sun. Old Dutchy is laying it off because someone has spilt water on the main-hatch, where a sail is spread out, ready for his work. In course, the bo'sun has called him a 'squarehead,' and 'Sails,' a decent ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... was wild; against the glass The rain did beat and bicker; The church-tower swinging over head, You scarce ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the gear Is gone where glint the pawky een. And aye the stound is birkin lear Where sconnered yowies wheepen yestreen. The creeshie rax wi' skelpin' kaes Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs, Nor weanies in their wee bit claes Glour light as lammies wi' ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... little embankment; and on the left hand you look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam. The water is deliciously cool and clear, running as it does straight off the chalk. No words of mine can do justice ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... may rail at town land till all have gone to wrack, The very straws may wrangle till they've thrown down the stack; The very door-posts bicker till they've pulled in the door, The very ale-jars jostle till the ale is on the floor, But this ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats

... Sarah scorned to bicker with her slave, yet the rage she felt found vent in these words to Abraham:[120] "It is thou who art doing me wrong. Thou hearest the words of Hagar, and thou sayest naught to oppose them, and I hoped that thou wouldst take my part. For thy sake did I leave my native land and the house of my father, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... Gallery excel it in variety, but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better lighted than ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... to give a dim ornament to the future;—not a star to be seen;—no permanent light to gild my horizon;—only the fading helps to transient gaiety in the lamps of Tunbridge;—no Law coffee-house at hand, or any other house of relief;—no antagonist to bicker one into a control of one's cares by a successful opposition, [Footnote: Richardson was remarkable for his love of disputation; and Tickell, when hard pressed by him in argument, used often, as a last resource, to assume the voice and manner ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... a Burns, or the pencil of a Hogarth, to paint the scene which follows. The ambrosial food is despatched in aspiring draughts by the family, who soon give evident proofs of the enlivening effects of the Lagan-le-vrich. As soon as each despatches his bicker, he jumps out of bed—the elder branches to examine the ominous signs of the day,[84] and the younger to enter on its amusements. Flocking to the swing, a favourite amusement on this occasion, the youngest of the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... of working together to produce a budget on which this nation could live. Let us negotiate soon and hard. But in the end, let us produce. The American people await action. They didn't send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things, unity"—and this, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various



Words linked to "Bicker" :   quarrel, quibble, niggle, spat, pettifog, wrangle, dustup, brabble, row, words, debate, run-in, argue, fence, contend, tiff, pettifoggery, bickering



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