Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a dancing-master.

1838		C. Selby Dancing Barber Scene ii: It is the kicker, sure enough: what am I to do?
1926		Aberdeen Jrnl 7 Apr. 6/4: Kickers in Ballrooms. Teachers of dancing [...] are wondering what they can do to provide something different for ballrooms.

2. in pl., the feet.

1838		D. Crockett in Meine Crockett Almanacks (1955) 126: Set your kickers on land, and I’ll give you a severe licking.
1845		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 17 May 4/1: Wants to dance in the fashion. oh! [...] Kickers floor cum heel et toe.

3. (US) a chorus-girl.

1889

Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 28 Dec. 2/2: Kickers in petticoats are now the fashion here. [...] Rose Batcheldor, Nellie Sennett, Alice Batcheldor and Edith Macklin come out arrayed in regulation smiles, black satin skirts, white embroidered petticoats and black silk hose and fling these various articles wildly around at a delighted [...] audience.

4. (US) in poker, a high card, such as an ace, retained in the hope of matching the pair or as a bluff [? fig. use of SE kick, i.e. defeat, surpass].

1892		W.J. Florence Gentleman’s Hbk Poker 91: To keep two small cards and an ace is called holding up ‘a kicker’ .
1902		G.H. Lorimer Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (2007) 116: The Augustus was just a fancy touch, a sort of high-card kicker .
1936		C.J. Kenny This Is Murder 1: If you’d drawn down to your hand and hadn’t saved a kicker you might have stood a chance.
1946		Morehead & Mott-Smith Penguin Hoyle 127: To keep an ace or other high card as a ‘kicker’ seriously decreases the chances of improving [DA].
1953		W.P. McGivern Big Heat 130: He held an ace kicker to a pair of tens.
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 144: Holding a kicker, Andy?
2001		J.G. Rosa Wild Bill Hickok Gunfighter 163: The accepted version is that the cards were the ace of spades, the ace of clubs [...] and either the jack of diamonds or the queen of diamonds as the ‘kicker’.

5. in pl., shoes.

1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl.
1958		‘Vox Bop’ AS XXXIII:3 224: The cat (or stud) who [...] dons his [...] skypiece, his kickers [etc.].
1970–2		G. Underwood ‘Razorback Sl.’ AS L (1975) 62: kickers n Shoes, especially canvas shoes with rubber soles.

6. (US) an outboard motor.

1950

R. Starnes And When She Was Bad 183: ‘I might even [...] get me a kicker.’ Dr. Peachy looked puzzled. "A kicker?" he asked. [...] ‘A outboard injine’.

7. (US) in pl., boots with pointed toes, made from rare or exotic reptile skins (e.g. armadillo, alligator, snake); such boots are used spec. for dancing.

1991

in DARE III 209/2: There are two kinds of boots, both of which have pointed toes: kickers and shit-kickers. Men wore kickers for dancing. Kickers have an inch, inch-and-a-half heel and are made out of rare, reptilian leathers [...] People go dancing to Western music and most of these dances involved stomping, so you need a hard heel; kickers are just what you want.

8. (Irish prison) a member of the in-prison riot squad.

1996

P. Howard The Joy (2015) [ebook] [T]he Mountjoy riot squad, or ‘the kickers’ as we called them.