nip

See also Nip

English

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Pronunciation

• enPR: nĭp, IPA: /nɪp/, SAMPA: /nIp/
• Rhymes: -ɪp

Etymology 1

From Middle English nippen (“a small sip”).

Noun

nip (plural nips)

1. A small quantity of something edible or a potable liquor.

   I’ll just take a nip of that cake.

   He had a nip of whiskey.

Synonyms

• nibble (of food)
• See also Wikisaurus:drink

Etymology 2

Diminutive of nipple.

Noun

nip (plural nips)

1. (vulgar) A nipple, usually of a woman.

Etymology 3

Probably from a form of Middle Dutch nipen. Cognate with Danish nive (“pinch”); Low German knipen; German kneipen and kneifen (“to pinch, cut off, nip”), Old Norse hnippa (“to prod, to poke”); Lithuanian knebti.

Verb

nip (third-person singular simple present nips, present participle nipping, simple past and past participle nipped)

1. To catch and enclose or compress tightly between two surfaces, or points which are brought together or closed; to pinch; to close in upon.
   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King, Merlin and Vivien:

     May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell, Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress.

2. To remove by pinching, biting, or cutting with two meeting edges of anything; to clip.
   • 1716, John Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry^[1]:

     The small shoots ... must be nipt off.

3. To blast, as by frost; to check the growth or vigor of; to destroy.
4. To vex or pain, as by nipping; hence, to taunt.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:

     And sharp remorse his heart did prick and nip.

Noun

nip (plural nips)

1. A playful bite.

   The puppy gave his owner’s finger a nip.

2. A pinch with the nails or teeth.
3. Briskly cold weather.

   There is a nip in the air. It is nippy outside.

4. A seizing or closing in upon; a pinching; as, in the northern seas, the nip of masses of ice.
5. A small cut, or a cutting off the end.
6. A blast; a killing of the ends of plants by frost.
7. A biting sarcasm; a taunt.
8. (nautical) A short turn in a rope. Nip and tuck, a phrase signifying equality in a contest. [Low, U.S.]
9. The place of intersection where one roll touches another in papermaking.
10. (historical slang) A pickpocket.
    • 1977, Gãmini Salgãdo, The Elizabethan Underworld, Folio Society, published 2006, page 27:

      A novice nip, newly arrived in London, went one afternoon to the Red Bull in Bishopsgate, an inn converted to a playhouse.

Related terms

• nip and tuck
• nip in the bud

Translations

playful bite

Portuguese: mordiscar (pt) Swedish: nafs (sv) n.

cold weather

Swedish: nyp (sv) n.

• Telugu: తుంచు (tuMchu)

Etymology 4

Verb

nip (third-person singular simple present nips, present participle nipping, simple past and past participle nipped)

1. To make a quick, short journey or errand; usually roundtrip.

   Why don’t you nip down to the grocer’s for some milk?

Anagrams

• NPI
• pin, PIN

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Albanian

Etymology

Possibly from Latin nepos.

Noun

nip m.

1. nephew

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Dutch

Verb

nip

1. first-person singular present indicative of nippen.
2. imperative of nippen.

Anagrams

• pin