Definition of "kipper"

Kipper, I discovered, was airman's slang for a fishing boat. The chief function of this particular station was the escorting of convoys and fishing fleets, and the section which had the latter duty to perform was known as the ‘Kipper Patrol’.

1941, L. Walmsley, Fishermen at War

Kipper-kites, aircraft engaged on convoy escort duties over the North Sea and usually giving protection to the fishing-vessels.

1943, J. L. Hunt, A. G. Pringle, Service Slang, page 42

As she was only crawling along I aimed my first ‘kipper’ just a fraction ahead of her bows.

1953, Mars Unbroken

I evaluate its firing power at eighteen torpedoes—I think kipper is a distressing piece of naval slang—in thirty minutes.

1959, G. Jenkins, Twist of Sand

'Fancy running the risk of getting a kipper [a torpedo] to go with his grub.'

2009, Jean Hood, Submarine, page 197

1 Kipper, Englishman

1946, R. Rivett, Behind Bamboo 397

An able seaman on a kipper warship called the Eagle.

1946 August 8, Sunday Sun (Sydney)

Quite often they [sc. English immigrants in Australia] are referred to as Kippers.

1963 May 24, Times Literary Supplement

You kippers—no guts and two faces—are only strong under the armpits... What about the east of Suez caper, eh?

1967, K. Giles, Death & Mr. Prettyman

With these weapons the natives invest their young men at the age of from fourteen to sixteen years... These young men are then called kippers, and for the first time enjoy the privilege of taking an active part in the fight.

1841, C. Eipper, German Mission to Aborigines

Around us sat ‘Kippers’, i.e. ‘hobbledehoy blacks’.

1853, H. B. Jones, Adventures Australian, page 126

A ceremony at which the young men..receive the rank of warriors and are henceforth called Kippers.

1885, R. C. Praed, Australian Life

Don't push so, 'Liza; you're a-knockin' my 'at off, yer silly kipper!'

1899, Laura Ormiston Chant, Sellcuts' Manager, page 253

'Marriage during the Emergency isn't for me. I think of Alyson Carew. But carrying on with another officer's wife, well, separated wife; won't it affect my career?' 'Don't be a silly kipper.'

2010, Frederick Lees, The Malayan Life of Ferdach O'Haney

Why didn't he go to the May Island, the silly kipper that he was, and bring us all back a nice wee lass instead of you, you nasty brat!'

2018, Rosemary Goring, Scotland: Her Story

Half-a-dozen dreadfully common young bicyclists were commenting on her discomfiture with delighted exclamations of ‘Giddy old Kipper’, ‘Sweet Seventeen’, ‘Cheero, Maudie—you'll win!’

1907 April 10, Punch

If you're enterprizing enough to climb one of the trees christened by usage ‘The Kipper's Tree’, which hardly needs to be translated into plainer terms.

1923, M. M. Gibb, Hetherington's Affinity

A chap who has got duck's disease is most often labelled ‘Tich’... Alternatively: ankle biter,..kipper, microbe, midge, [etc.].

1959, I. Opie, P. Opie, Lore & Language

There was kippered salmon, and Finnan haddocks, and a lamb's head, and a haggis […]

1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 49, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837

"Your own fault. Did you imagine I was going to live on a gasring, because you wouldn't have your chimney repaired?" Then Diva got a tenant in spite of the kippered bathroom, and moved to a dilapidated hovel close beside the railway line, which she got for half the rent which she received for her house.

1935, Edward Frederic Benson, The Worshipful Lucia, page 252

“When I was in 23 Squadron,” Mayo said,”we had a pilot who could blow smoke through his ears.” “That doesn't make him dotty,” Goss said. “It might have kippered his brains,” Jimmy Duncan suggested.

2011, Derek Robinson, War Story

So she let herself be crammed into a corner of the smelliest pub in town, slowly kippering in a haze of other people's cigarette smoke.

2012, Zoe Barnes, Just Married

The gorgeous exhalation of millions of gaspers and fags and tabs and snouts and pipes and – my personal favourite– Panatelas, had kippered my walls for a century and a quarter.

2020, James Nelson Roebuck, Red Flags

She was the daintiest and most exquisite little figure imaginable, never did she stir out of doors without layers of veil to protect her from the kippering effects of sun and wind, and she preserved untouched by unguents or “mess” the complexion of a girl, smooth and soft and unwrinkled.

1930, E. F. Benson, As We Were - A Victorian Peep Show

The beach was littered with palm-thatch umbrellas and half-naked, kippering bodies, and the Marina packed with seagoing craft of every description.

1995, Rosamunde Pilcher, Three Complete Novels, page 102

He taught us to soak our feet with meths and pot permang , kippering them hard and black , preventing blisters.

2004, Trevor Clark, Good Second Class (but Not Even C.3), page 58

Even the smell of aviation fuel from departing aircraft would be better than being kippered in here.

2005, David M. Addison, An Italian Journey: A Sort of Latter-Day Mini Grand Tour, page 28

No man should appear at his day's labors unless well kippered. May I kipper you, madam ”

1995, Anne Douglas, Miss Caroline's Deception, page 106

Come over and have a drink. […] I'm half kippered myself.

2009, Rex Beach, The Silver Horde

'And you keep your oath now, that you'll never drink again, Spijak?'... That's right girl that's my word. He lifts out a half finished bottle of vodka and takes a pull at it...and you won't be kippering none more than I can help.

2015, Michael Hastings, The Cutting of the Cloth

Where of old, with awful mysteries and diabolic din, They “kippered” adolescents in the presence of their kin

1902, James Brunton Stephens, The Poetical Works, page 262

He's liable to get himself kippered on something hairbrained.

1985, Stephen Hunter, The Spanish Gambit

Right there and then, we all vowed to avoid a 'kippering' from Morris. And there was no doubt that we admired Rob for taking the beating and not to be crying his eyes out twelve hours later.

2015, Michael Volpe, Noisy at the wrong times: (Battles with myself), page 86

As for Mr. Mowbray you must know that he is not only the chief plotter, inventor, and spreader abroad of all these base calumnies, but he did also, like a fool, vent before his going home, to one whom he though had not been my friend, that he had taken notes of all words spoken by me in Scotland, and that he would construct and relate them to the Marquis of Hamilton, and so kipper me at the King's hands, that I should have no more pension.

1877, William Douglas Hamilton, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, page 511

(see title)

2005 March 16, “Mark Seddon, 'How I was kippered by my party,'”, in The Guardian

Carver had been kippered and he knew it. He'd been framed good and proper. caught redhanded. still holding on to the phone like an absolute idiot.

2010, Tom Cain, Assassin, page 206

How he'd specialised in kippering a long line of informants, only to get totally kippered himself by this very same tom.

2010, Graham Hurley, Borrowed Light

Were the missing crewmen kippered by a squid?

2001, Rachel Wright, The True Mystery of the Mary Celeste, page 27

while clearly holding a banana in front of the proposed kippering victim if he replied with a straight answer to the question then he had been "kippered", and the correct response of the kipperer was to adopt a dramatically pained expression and look away while exhaling heavily, usually following up with the phrase, "Ooh, kippered him a treat.

2004, Jonathan Blyth, Law of the Playground, page 108

Reviewing himself, Fisher writes with characteristic wryness: 'I think he's a Romantic, gutted and kippered by two centuries' hard knocks.'

2007, Michael O'Neill, The All-Sustaining Air

Chana Bindl, having been revived, grew distressed again at the revelation that the rooms she so scrupulously scoured had remained full of grime, while her husband stood chewing his whiskers, conflicted in his kippered heart.

2011, Steve Stern, The Frozen Rabbi, page 98

That’s how they got Al Capone, you know: the taxman kippered him up.

2011, Colin MacFarlane, No Mean Glasgow, page ?

These were kipper salmon, and an acquaintance of mine living at Burton Rowbottom who was trolling for pike at Yoxall, near to King's Bromley, got a run, five years ago, and caught a beautiful salmon weighting 25 lbs.

1861, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Reports from Commissioners - Volume 23, page 523

the milner of Brignall for that he doth usually keep in the back beck a fishlock in the river called Gill Beck, below his mill and the forebeck of another fishlock [sic] above the mill, whereby he taketh and destroyeth much fish, to wit —routs, at his pleasure, and taketh, etc. divers fish when they are kipper and out of season;

1888, Great Britain. Court of Quarter Sessions of the Peace (North Riding of Yorkshire), John Christopher Atkinson, Quarter Sessions Records - Volume 6, page 43

Walton next tells us that the he-salmon is usually bigger than the spawner; that he is more kipper and less able to endure a winter in the fresh water than she is, yet she is, at that time of looking less kipper and better, as watery and as bad meat.'

1898, Alfred Erskine Gathorne-Hardy, The Salmon, page 15

Three weeks ago 25 per cent of the salmon running were kipper salmon.

1923, New Zealand. Parliament. House of Representatives, Journal. Appendix, page 17

Blades initiated a regeneration in modern British tailoring that from the mid-sixties began by flirting somewhat uneasily with the hippie style -- its most flamboyant exponent being Michael Fish, who opened premises in Piccadilly in 1966, introducing the kipper tie , Russian-style side-fastening tunics, see-through shirts and mini skirts for men.

2005, Christoph Grunenberg, Jonathan P. Harris, Summer of Love, page 213

The trousers became more flared, the ties more kipper, and, the crowning glory (at least I thought so), was thatI was the first in my department to sport a pink shirt.

2013, Malcolm Philips, Jobsworth: Confessions of the Man from the Council

Dad bought a red Scotch plaid tie, very near to 'kipper' size, but mum was still wearing flared skirts below the knee.

2017, Jean A. Stockdale, My Spring: Royal Times and Ordinary Lives

Wide lapels, but not too wide – this wasn't 1973 any more for Christ's sake – a three-button waistband on the flared trousers, not too flared, platform shoes, not ridiculously high, kipper tie, not too kipper.

2021, Brian Cunningham, Under the Bonnet: Confessions of a 1970s and '80s Car Mechanic

Thus he goes on, from morn till eve, from season to season, year in and year out, semingly impervious to the weather, being altogether too kipper and grievous to be taken with anything worse than a ' snivelly cold . '

1900, Harvey Buxon, Our Remarkable Fledger, page 180

There's others won't come up so kipper if they daon't easy orf a bit.

1929, Geoffrey Dell Eaton, Senator George W. Norris, General William Mitchell, Don C.Seltz, Elisabeth W. Smith, Plain Talk - Volume 5, page 63

Nay—heaw—so—Tummus; goo theaw an smeawtch Seroh o' Rutchot's iv yo bin so kipper.

2014, John Collier, Tim Bobbin's Tummus and Meary