creeker

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: krēkə IPA^(key): /kɹiːkə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /kɹikɚ/, (Appalachia) /kɹɪkɚ/
• Rhymes: -iːkə, -iːkə(ɹ)
• Homophone: creaker

Etymology 1

From creek +‎ -er, denoting someone who lives in such a rural place that he has no hometown or settlement but a nearby creek.

Noun

creeker (plural creekers)

1. (Appalachia, derogatory) A poor rural person.
   • 2002 June 21, Linda Scott DeRosier, Creeker: A Woman's Journey, Lexington, Kentucky, United States: The University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN:

     I want, at the outset to differentiate between those Appalachians who grow up in the towns and those from rural areas—the creeks and the hollers… This is a story from rural Appalachia, recently brought to consciousness, and reported by a creeker.

   • 2017 August 23, Trey Kay, “Us & Them: 'You're Either a Hiller or a Creeker'”, in Us & Them‎^[1], Charleston, West Virginia, United States: West Virginia Public Broadcasting, archived from the original on 27 July 2020:

     But at my alma mater in West Virginia, we had a unique "Us & Them" sorting classification: you were either a “hiller” or a “creeker.”

2. (archaic) A Viking.
   • 1866, Charles Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 12:

     Children of the old Vikings, or "Creekers", they took, in their great need, to the seaward and the estuaries, as other conquered races take to the mountains, and died, like their forefathers, within scent of the salt sea from whence they came.

   • 1882, anonymous author, Outline of the history of the English language and literature, Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers:

     Wick, a creek or bay - Ipswich, Greenwich, Berwick. (Viking = a creeker.)

Coordinate terms

• hiller, the next highest socioeconomic class

Etymology 2

Noun

creeker (plural creekers)

1. Alternative form of krieker (“pectoral sandpiper”)