Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a vagrant, a tramp, a gipsy.

1838		W. Holloway Dict. of Provincialisms 128/1: Piker, A tramp who is always on the road.
1876		L. Hearn Amer. Misc. (1924) I 183: There was [...] Dan Booker, the withered old ‘piker’ who used to wander about the levee bent crescent-wise with age, and finally died in the Workhouse, serving out a sentence of vagrancy [DA].
1904		Number 1500 Life In Sing Sing 251: Piker. a hobo.
1913		D. Runyon ‘In Old Juarez’ 1 Jan. [synd. col.] A dobe dump by the river’s brink / On the Juarez side, where the pikers stay.
1922		John O’London’s Weekly 4 Feb. 591/2: The ‘Pikers’ [...] are a wandering homeless lot who haunt the wilds of Sussex, scraping together a bare existence selling blackberries, mushrooms, and the like to people in the neighbouring villages and towns.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
2013		New Statesman 23-29 Aug. 44/3: Travellers? We know who they are. Tinkers, pikers, didicoi.

2. (US) a small-time gambler.

1859		Matsell Vocabulum 116: piker Is a man who plays very small amounts. Plays a quarter, wins, pockets the winnings, and keeps at quarters; and never, if he can help it, bets on his winnings.
1871		Galaxy (N.Y.) July 63: Gamblers have a saying as caustic and more true, that a ‘Stormer is sure to be a piker.’ The first term interpreted into English, means one who has an extraordinary run of good luck by which he has pocketed thousands, while a ‘piker’ is a tolerated collapse who makes a stray bet when he can beg or borrow a ‘check.’.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 362: Nothing is more annoying to young bank players, or will gall them worse or more quickly, than to be called ‘pikers,’ or ‘crabbers,’ or ‘check-sweaters’ – words almost synonymous, and meaning a person who bets one or two white checks at a time.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 58: Piker, a gambler who only plays for small amounts, and never doubles his winnings.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 79: The gang of plungers and pikers.
1902		Bulletin Reciter 1880-1901 8: He’s the lad to stop the pikers when they take you on the rush.
1909		H. Green Mr. Jackson 43: With an opportunity like this a man shouldn’t be a piker.
1916		J. Lait ‘‘Taxi, Mister!’’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 139: He will have the concentrated shady knowledge of all the bloods, pikers, come-ons, roisterers, gamblers, cheaters, beaux, rich men’s sons, and poor men’s daughters.
1928		R. Carr Rampant Age 247: They called him a ‘piker,’ among other things.
1938		H. Asbury Sucker’s Progress 16: An extraordinary number of the terms, technical and otherwise, which were employed by Faro players [...] have passed into the language [...] Here are some of them: [...] Piking—Making small bets all over the layout. Piker—One who made piking bets.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 41: They called us pikers because we didn’t bet high enough.
1949		R. Service ‘Montreal Maree’ in Songs of a Sun Lover (1955) 73: ‘I’ll plug that piker full of lead,’ exploded Windy Bill.
1955		Argus (Melbourne) 30 Apr. 11/1: Despite his big deals, his million-dollar profits and high-toned affairs [...] Rubinstein remained a piker [...] as far as Europe was concerned.
1959		C. Himes Crazy Kill 101: Throw down, all you pikers. The players carried their bets to him.
1965		J. Thompson Texas by the Tail (1994) 4: I’m goin’ to shoot another hundred [...] You think I’m a piker, I’ll show you.
1970		R. Fabian Anatomy of Crime 194: Piker: Confidence trickster playing for small sums.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 299: piker. [...] in gambling, one who makes only small bets.
1996		Eble Sl. and Sociability 21: The argot of the race-track, for instance, is responsible for piker ‘small time gambler’; ringer ‘illegally substituted horse’; shoo-in ‘fixed race, easy win’; and others.

3. (orig. US) a mean, grasping person, one who will not take the least risk, esp. to help others.

1899		W.J. Kountz Billy Baxter’s Letters 57: Well, you know I’m not a piker. I went after her right. Eats, drinks, shows, and all the expensive things.
1901		‘Hugh McHugh’ John Henry 38: Being somewhat of a money hater myself, of course I’m wise enough to pikers.
1902		Bulletin Reciter 1880-1901 8: He’s the lad to stop the pikers when they take you on the rush.
1912		G.R. Chester Five Thousand an Hour Ch. xxiii: You got Jacobs to buy you these bonds, and Jacobs is a piker. He confessed and begged for mercy.
1927		K. Nicholson Barker III i: I ain’t no piker, an’ I can take my medicine.
1931		W.N. Burns One-Way Ride 19: There wasn’t a piker’s hair in Big Jim’s head [...] Whatever game he played, he shot straight.
1938		G. Kersh Night and the City 114: Too expensive, hell! [...] What am I, a piker?
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 210: Don’t be a piker. Think big.
1959		M. Richler Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1964) 179: You get us a job in Westmount and ther’ll be something in it for you. I’m no piker, you know.
1961		G.L. Coon Meanwhile, Back at the Front (1962) 263: Albert Fall was a piker.
1974		(con. 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 60: ‘He’s too damn lucky. Think I’ll quit,’ Jack complained. ‘The hell! Don’t be a piker.’.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 299: piker. A worthless person; a timid plodder, who takes no risks; a tightwad.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 157: piker Somebody who opts out of an activity, usually a drinking bout, eg, ‘Mike proved a piker again, didn’t come to the party’ . Piking on your mates disappoints them, because you have not arrived. To pike out on your mates is to depart, perhaps in the sense of being rendered unconscious by excessive booze intake. From these meanings comes the general sense of somebody contemptible. ANZ, from British dialect piker for a tramp or gypsy.

4. an insignificant person.

1898		Boston Sun. Globe 15 May 36/4: There are two kinds of salesmen, the ‘pikers,’ who grind away all the time, and the men who bunch their hits, to use a baseballism [DA].
1901		‘Hugh McHugh’ John Henry 92: She put us wise to the fact that Tennyson couldn’t play in her yard, and that Edgar Allan Poe was a piker compared with her.
1911		Alaska Citizen 28 Aug. 7/2: He passed up the home girls as though they were pikers.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 99: He doesn’t write for long-haired pikers, he writes for Regular Guys.
1935		S. Horler London’s Und. 62: His only stipulation being that they are wealthy. He has no use for ‘pikers’.
1936		J.T. Farrell World I Never Made 449: He’s only a piker alongside of fellows like Brophy.
1948		Lay & Bartlett Twelve O’clock High! (1975) 375: Doesn’t often sing [...] But when he does he makes a piker out of Caruso.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 64: ‘You’re a piker, Marlowe. You’re a peanut grifter. You’re so little it takes a magnifying glass to see you.’.
1963		R. Stow Tourmaline 29: You’re no piker, son [...] What’s your name?
1979		D. Maitland Breaking Out 4: Come on, you piker!
1983		R. Aven-Bray Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 39: Piker Weak person.
1999		K. Vonnegut Bagombo Snuff Box 294: By comparison with Smith and Wilson, Sigmund Freud was a piker when it came to healing dysfunctional minds and lives.
2005		L. Standiford Meet You in Hell xiii: If the present value of Carnegie's haul from the sale of his companies in 1901 were computed based on changes in the Consumer Price Index it would be about $8 billion, making him a relative piker compared to modern-day tycoons.
2013		T. Pluck ‘Six Feet Under God’ in Life During Wartime (2018) 188: Whoever took out the Prime Mover was no piker.

5. (orig. US) a lazy person.

1904		Number 1500 Life In Sing Sing 251: Piker. A lounger.
1916		L. Pound ‘Word-List From Nebraska’ in DN IV:iv 279: piker, n. A shirk. ‘He promised to help with the meeting, but he was a piker’.
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 74: Hobo philosophy is disposed to represent the man who is a long time on the job as a piker. He ought to leave a job once in a while simply to assert his independence.

6. a small-time burglar.

1916		J. Lait ‘Charlie the Wolf’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 26: No good burglaries had been reported in the time the Wolf had prowled at liberty. There were one or two cheap ones, but any one who knew anything knew the Wolf was no piker.
1928		M.C. Sharpe Chicago May (1929) 24: I read about Fagan, the thief-trainer, in Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’; but he was a piker, compared with my teachers.

7. a cheat.

1937		R. Westerby Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 185: ‘He’s a piker, Bill,’ he said, ‘he’s cheating.’ He pulled two cards out of Jim’s pocket.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak 113: Piker – a small-time cheat.

8. (Aus.) a (second-rate) confidence trickster.

1919		Sun (Sydney) 6 Mar. 8/2: This class of man is not a professional. He is what Americans call ‘a piker,’ and deals only in fivers or tenners. The high-class confidence men left Australia years ago [...] Those men deal only in hundreds and thousands.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 138: We are [...] originators of the following terms for various sharpers, tricksters and others who live by their wits: [...] lurk man, nineteener, piker, rorter [...] and amsterdam.
1946		Truth (Sydney) 1 Sept. 46/1: Jackson’s podgy features went brick red, with all the honest indignation of a piker who has been out-piked.

9. (Aus.) an unpleasant, unpopular person; a bore, a ‘party pooper’.

1949		I.L. Idriess One Wet Season 82: You must be a pretty old piker too.
1957		‘Nino Culotta’ They’re a Weird Mob (1958) 203: A bludger is the worst thing you can be in Australia. It means that you are criminally lazy, that you ‘pole on yer mates’, that you are a ‘piker’—a mean, contemptible, miserable individual who is not fit to associate with human beings.
1979		D. Maitland Breaking Out 285: Do you wish to accept our invitation and join in the general spirit of things, or [...] let them call you a spoilsport and a bloody piker.
1986		C. Bowles G’DAY 9: SHANE: You kickin on? MACKA: Not stayin ere on me pat, ya bloody piker. Miteswell come with ya.