Etymology From Middle English siker, from Old English sicer, sicor, from Proto-West Germanic *sikur (“free, secure”), from Latin sēcūrus (“secure”, literally “without care”). Doublet of sure and secure.
But ſicker ſo it is, as the bꝛight ſtarre / Seemeth ay greater, when it is farre:1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “September. Ægloga Nona.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC, folio 36, recto:
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And here was we made sicker than he was wi' you[…]1880, L.B. Walford, “Dick Netherby”, in Good Words, volume 22, Alexander Strahan and Company, page 774:
I'm as great on the side o' the law as it's siccar to be in thae uncertain times.1896, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, chapter XVII, in The Raiders: Being Some Passages in the Life of John Faa, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt, Macmillan and Company, page 125:
sicker
adv
Etymology From Middle English siker, from Old English sicer, sicor, from Proto-West Germanic *sikur (“free, secure”), from Latin sēcūrus (“secure”, literally “without care”). Doublet of sure and secure.
Etymology Inherited from Middle English *sikeren (attested only as sikeriez (“(it) trickles, (it) leaks, (it) oozes”)), from Old English sicerian (“to ooze, seep”), from Proto-West Germanic *sikarōn, from Proto-Germanic *sikarōną (“to trickle”), from Proto-Germanic *sīką (“slow running water”). Cognate with German Low German sickern (“to seep”), German sickern (“to seep, trickle”). Akin also to English sitch.
No drop of water fell from the hot blue Or sickered from the skeleton of earth.1917, Gerhart Hauptmann, Ludwig Lewisohn, The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann, volume 7, page 185:
This cause had sickered into his soul; it had been branded upon his forehead somehow, by some hand; he knew not how nor by whom.1926, Jakob Wassermann, Wedlock, volume 10, page 217:
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The solution steadily sickered through the debris and the sampling of the solutions could be carried out without taking the equipment into pieces.1943, Acta minerologica, petrographica, volumes 1-11, page 17: