By April C. Armstrong *14
Dear Mr. Mudd,
Princeton University’s eating clubs have their own traditions, one of which is “bicker.” Where did this term originate?
It’s tough to know exactly where the term “bicker” originated, but according to Ten Years of Princeton University (1906), “bicker session” or “bickerbee” was used to describe a group getting together for conversation at the turn of the 20th century. You might get “stung” at a “bickerbee.” The book asserts that the term “bicker” arose in faculty councils, but “it was soon barred out as undignified and slangy.” Undergraduates, however, seemed to have adopted this slang as their own.
The Nassau Lit began running a series of stories about “Monsieur Bicker” in 1906, a man who liked to spend time with a friend named Gossip and mutual acquaintances. He appeared in the Lit through the mid-1910s, sometimes talking with others like “Dame Rumor” and “Mistress Hearsay.” From this context, to “bicker” would have been to gossip, spread rumors, and tell secondhand stories. During this time, we begin to see examples of “bicker” referring to the process of joining an eating club, too, but not exclusively. “Bicker Birds” is a term one also sees in the 1910s, seeming to sometimes (though not exclusively) refer to people who persuade others of something.
In 1909, the Princeton Alumni Weekly reported on a new campus publication, the Daily Bicker Bird. The PAW explained that the word “bicker” was used in a variety of counterintuitive ways:
The word in the campus lingo includes apparently any sort of discussion, conference, argument, gossip or scandal–almost everything but the ordinary significance of bickering or wrangling.
Readers of the Bicker Bird would purportedly keep everyone up to date on the stories going around the campus. Clubs were given numbers rather than names in its pages, and the stories seem to have been satirical.
In 1913, a few references are made to the new system of club elections being intended to end the “everlasting bicker” of the old system, such as a December Nassau Lit editorial, but the actual term “bicker” seemed to be becoming more popular as a way to refer to club elections; by 1914, it was being referred to by the term “club bicker” in announcements. However, the term still seemed to refer more generally to group conversations, as attested in several sources, including the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 1918, which noted that “the undergraduate’s favorite pastime” was to “bicker.”
What seems likely is that “bicker” was a general term that was applied to eating clubs in the 1910s, and was retained there long after the general use to refer to Princetonians meeting up and talking together fell out of favor. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the term “P-Rade,” which now refers to a specific parade, but used to refer to any parade Princetonians had (and parading was a popular activity in general, so there would have been plenty of P-Rades).
Sources:
Princeton Alumni Weekly
Princeton University Publications Collection (AC364)
Ten Years of Princeton University. New York: F. P. McBreen, 1906.
For Further Reading:
Bampton, Zachary, with April C. Armstrong. “Do You Speak Princetonian?: The Language of Princeton.”