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sicker. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
sicker, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
sicker in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
sicker you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Middle English siker, sikker, sykkere, secre, seccre, from Old English sēocra (“sicker”), equivalent to sick + -er.
Adjective
sicker
- 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.
Adjective
sicker
- (obsolete outside dialects) Certain.
I'm sicker that he's not home.
- (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, 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, 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
- (obsolete outside dialects) Certainly.
- (obsolete outside dialects) Securely.
Derived terms
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.
Verb
sicker (third-person singular simple present sickers, present participle sickering, simple past and past participle sickered)
- (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
German
Pronunciation
Verb
sicker
- inflection of sickern:
- first-person singular present
- singular imperative
Middle English
Adjective
sicker
- Alternative form of siker
Adverb
sicker
- Alternative form of siker