bicker

Etymology 1

From Middle English bikeren (“to attack”), from Middle Dutch bicken (“to stab, thrust, attack”) + -er (frequentative suffix), from Proto-Germanic *bikjaną (compare Old English becca (“pickax”), Dutch bikken (“to hack”), German picken (“to peck, pick at”), Old Norse bikkja (“to plunge into water”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeg- (“to smash, break”). Compare also German Low German bickern (“to nibble, gnaw”).

verb

1. To quarrel in a tiresome, insulting manner.
   They bickered about dinner every evening.
   Travelling with their granny, who seems more interested in her crossword puzzle than them, they bicker and fight in a futile bid to get her attention. Oh, the joys of travelling during the school holidays! November 16 2022, Paul Bigland, “From rural branches to high-speed arteries”, in RAIL, number 970, page 55
2. To brawl or move tremulously, quiver, shimmer (of a water stream, light, flame, etc.)
   I come from haunts of coot and hern, / I make a sudden sally, / And sparkle out among the fern, / To bicker down a valley. 1886, Tennyson, The Brook
3. (of rain) To patter.
4. To skirmish; to exchange blows; to fight.

noun

1. A skirmish; an encounter.
2. (Scotland, obsolete) A fight with stones between two parties of boys.
   Even if he did not take part in the fighting himself, he was no doubt familiar with those who had been taught, ass Darsie Latimer was by Alan Fairford, to "smoke a cobbler, spin a lozen, head a bicker, and hold the bannets" - in other words, to break a window, head a skirmish with stones, and hold the bonnet[…] 1773, R. Ford, “Biographical Introduction”, in The Poetical Works of Robert Ferguson
3. A wrangle; also, a noise, as in angry contention.
4. The process by which selective eating clubs at Princeton University choose new members.
   Bicker process varies by club, and there are often concerns of the rights of female students during bicker […] 2005, Alison Fraser, Princeton University: Princeton, New Jersey, College Prowler, Inc, page 41

Etymology 2

From Scots bicker, from Middle English biker. Doublet of beaker.

noun

1. (Scotland) A wooden drinking-cup or other dish.
   …the liquors were handed around in great fulness, the ale in large wooden bickers, and the brandy in capacious horns of oxen. 1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford, published 2010, page 6