Dictionary

sicker en · ADJ · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈsɪkɚ/ (General-American)

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English siker, sikker, sykkere, secre, seccre, from Old English sēocra (“sicker”), equivalent to sick + -er.

Meanings

1. (comparative, form-of) comparative form of sick: more sick.
   form of sick

sicker en · ADJ · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈsɪkɚ/ (General-American)

Etymology

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.

Meanings

1. Certain.
   • I'm sicker that he's not home.
2. Secure; safe.
   • To walk a sicker path
   • But ſicker ſo it is, as the bꝛight ſtarre / Seemeth ay greater, when it is farre: 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “September. Ægloga Nona.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC, folio 36, recto:
   • I'm as great on the side o' the law as it's siccar to be in thae uncertain times. 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:
   • And here was we made sicker than he was wi' you[…] 1880, L.B. Walford, “Dick Netherby”, in Good Words, volume 22, Alexander Strahan and Company, page 774:

Forms

sicker en · ADV · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈsɪkɚ/ (General-American)

Etymology

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.

Meanings

1. Certainly.
2. Securely.

Forms

Deriveds

sickerness · sickerly · sickerhood

sicker en · VERB · etymology 3

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈsɪkɚ/ (General-American)

Etymology

Inherited 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.

Meanings

1. (figuratively, intransitive, qualifier:literal) To percolate, trickle, or seep; to ooze, as water through a crack.
   • No drop of water fell from the hot blue Or sickered from the skeleton of earth. 1917, Gerhart Hauptmann, Ludwig Lewisohn, The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, volume 7, page 185:
   • The solution steadily sickered through the debris and the sampling of the solutions could be carried out without taking the equipment into pieces. 1943, Acta minerologica, petrographica, volumes 1-11, page 17:
   • 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. 1926, Jakob Wassermann, Wedlock, volume 10, page 217:

Forms