Also 5 biquere, 6 biquour. [Sc. form of BEAKER.] ‘A bowl or dish for containing liquor, properly one made of wood.’ Jamieson. Formerly, a drinking cup of any material; in modern Scotch applied also to vessels made of wooden staves for holding porridge, etc.
1458. Will of Russel (Somerset Ho.). Meum biquere argenti.
c. 1505. Dunbar, Test. Kennedy, 47. But and I hecht to tume a Bicker.
a. 1774. Fergusson, Farmer’s Ing., Poems (1845), 37. The cheering bicker gars them glibly gash.
1814. Scott, Rob Roy, xxiv. ‘It will be a heavy deficit—a staff out o’ my bicker, I trow.’
1884. U. P. Mag., July, 337. Coopers found employment in making or mending ‘bickers’ for brose or porridge.
b. attrib. and comb., as bickerful, bickermaker.
1813. W. Beattie, Tales, 37 (Jam.). A brown bickerfu’ to quaff.
1822. Scott, Pirate, I. 265 (Jam.). A bickerfu’ of meal.
1851. J. M. Wilson, Tales Borders, VIII. 162. He followed the profession of a cooper or bicker-maker.
