Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a small measure of spirits.

1842		Flash (NY) 4 Sept. n.p.: [She] has administered as many three-cent ‘nippers’ as any lady in the profession.
1843		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 4 Feb. n.p.: [He] has affixed his signature to the pledge of total abstinence and no more ‘nippers’ or ‘ponies’.

2. a baby; a young boy (pre-teenage).

1859		Hotten Dict. Sl. 68: nipper, a small boy.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. [as cit. 1859].
1873		Sl. Dict. 237: Nipper a sharp lad.
1888		J. Runciman Chequers 54: They calls it a stream, but I dussn’t say wot I thinks it is afore the nipper.
1892		Albert Chevalier ‘Our Little Nipper’ 🎵 I’ve got a little nipper, when ’e talks I’ll lay yer forty shiners to a quid You’ll take ’im for the father, me the kid.
1898		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 9 Jan. 1/2: The average Australian ‘nipper’s’ knowledge of racing minutiæ, although highly interesting and instructive, is not altogether calculated to assist him when the starting-orders go up for Life's Handicap.
1899		C. Rook Hooligan Nights 2: I lived there when I was a nipper.
1901		Truth (Sydney) 20 Jan. 5/7: [of a 12-year-old girl] Up them stairs the nipper slips, and / Soon the door is locked.
1907		H. Lawson ‘The Horses’ in Roderick (1972) 704: He’ll come in handy for one of the nippers to ride now’n then.
1912		P.C. Wren Dew & Mildew 252: — Been vaccinated lately?’ ‘No, not since I was a nipper’.
1916		‘Anzac’ On the Anzac Trail 83: ‘How about buying the old lady out [i.e. of sweets] and filling up the nippers?’ he said.
1917		Wodehouse ‘The Making of Mac’s’ in Man with Two Left Feet ) 122: A little freckled nipper he was when I first knew him.
1923		W. Holtby Anderby Wold (1981) 168: And how‘s the nipper? By Jove, the very image of his father.
1924		Lawrence & Skinner Boy in Bush 64: Same’s all the nips round here. He went t’ same school.
1928		T.W.H. Crosland ‘Blighty’ in Last Poems 48: Behold the end of all my woes – / The nipper in his Sunday clothes, / The missus blooming like a rose, Blighty!
1938		G. Kersh Night and the City 202: Even when you was a nipper, you was like that.
1948		C. Day Lewis Otterbury Incident 65: Give yer sixpence if yer stays ’ere beside me for ’arf an hour, you two nippers.
1957		G. Kersh Fowlers End (2001) 181: I got a sweet tooth. I never ’ad enough sweet stuff when I was a nipper.
1964		P. Terson Night to Make the Angels Weep (1967) II xii: When Sin was a nipper, he was got at in the fields by a gang from the hollow.
1965		E. Bond Saved Scene iii: An’ the nip’s mother reckons ’e ain’ got a blame ‘isself.
1972		P. Fordham Inside the Und. 53: Give you a good piece of advice [...] Same as I always tell the nippers.
1981		J. Sullivan ‘Big Brother’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] Let me remind you Rodney that you were a six-year-old little nipper when God smiled on Mum and made her die!
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 83: He’d been taking us to court on the old fines since we were nippers.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 89: The poor nipper was so scared he shook.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 101: Here's a seagull, obese with rum’n’raisin / from a nipper's cone.

3. a boy who hires himself out to a costermonger or market greengrocer.

1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 33/2: Some lads, however, are the smallest class of costermongering youths; and are soometimes called ‘cas’alty boys,’ or ‘nippers’.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 53: Nipper,, a sharp lad.

4. a small, short person.

1959

A. Sillitoe ‘Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ in Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 22: Mike was a nipper compared to me.

5. (Aus,) in a shearing shed a youngster used to perform odd jobs, e.g. make tea.

2006

B. Matthews Intractable [ebook] I was too little to help the roustabouts so the shearers made me the nipper – I boiled the billy for smoko and lunch and generally helped out where I could.