nipper

nip +‎ -er

• IPA^(key): /ˈnɪpə(ɹ)/

• Audio (AU)

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• Rhymes: -ɪpə(ɹ)

nipper (plural nippers)

1. One who, or that which, nips.
   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, published 1959, →OCLC:

     Watt saw the little movements of the stuff, the little bulgings and crumplings, and the sudden indrawings, where it was nipped, between forefinger and thumb probably, for those are the nippers.

2. (usually in the plural) Any of various devices (as pincers) for nipping.
3. (slang) A child.
   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, →ISBN, page 193:

     Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?

4. (Australia) A child aged from 5 to 13 in the Australian surf life-saving clubs.
   • 2003 Some Like It Hot: The Beach As a Cultural Dimension

     SLSA has become a multi-million dollar enterprise comprising 262 clubs located around the Australian coastline, with 100000 members, which included thousands of juniors or 'nippers', as they were more commonly known.

   • 2008, Tania Cassidy, Robyn L. Jones, Paul Potrac, Understanding Sports Coaching: The Social, Cultural and Pedagogical Foundations of Coaching Practice:

     It is the first day of training for a group of ten 'little nippers' (novice surf life-savers). An assortment of children expectantly hover in the clubhouse.

   • 2009, Didgeridoos and Didgeridon'ts: A Brit 's Guide to Moving Your Life Down Under

     Every club around Australia offers a Nippers programme. Nippers is open to children from the age of 5 through to 13 years old […]

   • October 6, 2011,

     The Nippers program, for children aged five to thirteen, promotes water safety skills and confidence in a safe beach environment

   • September 5, 2013, Eve Jeffery, "Nippers season begins on the north coast", in Echonetdaily

     Of our movement’s 153,000 members, over 58,500 are nippers (5-13 years). This equates to nearly 40% of our total membership and shows just how significant the junior movement is within surf lifesaving.

5. (historical) A boy working as a navvies' assistant.
6. (Canada, slang, Newfoundland) A mosquito.
7. (archaic) One of four foreteeth in a horse.
8. (obsolete) A satirist.
   • a. 1569 (date written), Roger Ascham, edited by Margaret Ascham, The Scholemaster: Or Plaine and Perfite Way of Teaching Children, to Vnderstand, Write, and Speake, the Latin Tong, […], London: […] John Daye, […], published 1570, →OCLC:

     […] ready backbiters, sore nippers, and spiteful reporters privily of good men.

9. (obsolete, slang) A pickpocket; a young or petty thief.
10. A fish, the cunner.
11. (archaic) A European crab (Polybius henslowii).
12. The claws of a crab or lobster.
13. A young bluefish.
14. (dated) A machine used by a ticket inspector to stamp passengers' tickets.
    • 1908, Transport World, volume 24, page 319:

      The railway ticket nipper has the identification number of the conductor on it […]

15. One of a pair of automatically locking handcuffs.
16. (historical) One of the gloves or mittens worn by fishermen to protect their hands from cold and abrasion.
    • 1997, Mark Kurlansky, Cod, page 112:

      Today, there are new synthetic materials to protect the hands, but until recently, fishermen wore nippers—thick rubber gloves with cotton lining.

• (pickpocket): see Thesaurus:pickpocket

nipper (third-person singular simple present nippers, present participle nippering, simple past and past participle nippered)

1. (nautical, transitive) To seize (two ropes) together.

• “nipper”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.