Tiddlywinker

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who plays tiddlywinks, the game in which small discs are flicked into a cup using larger discs
2. A person who takes part in the game of tiddlywinks by snapping counters across a table toward a central pot
3. One who competes at tiddlywinks, flipping small plastic discs into a target cup with a larger disc

Etymology: Tiddlywinks is the name of a game in which players flick small plastic discs into a cup, and a tiddlywinker is simply someone who plays it. The noun is built in the most ordinary way English builds such words: "tiddlywink" with the agent suffix "-er" added. The "-er" ending has a long pedigree, having come into English from Old English "-ere", a native suffix that itself descends from Latin "-arius", a common Roman marker of a person connected with a trade or activity. That same Latin ending passed into Old French as "-ier", which later reached English as "-er", so the tiddlywinker carries a suffix that has been denoting people for well over a thousand years.