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

     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.

   • 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.

   • The Nippers program, for children aged five to thirteen, promotes water safety skills and confidence in a safe beach environment.
   • 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 Understanding Sports Coaching: The Social, Cultural and Pedagogical Foundations of Coaching Practice. Tania Cassidy, Robyn L. Jones, Paul Potrac -

     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 […]

5. (historical) A boy working as a navvies' assistant.
6. (Canada, slang, Newfoundland) A mosquito.
7. One of four foreteeth in a horse.
8. (obsolete) A satirist.
   • Roger Ascham

     […] 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. 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.

• (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.