Word Direct Answers

What does "nip" mean?

Nip: To catch and inclose or compress tightly between two surfaces, or points which are brought together or closed; to pinch; to close in upon. May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell, Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Tennyson.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To remove by pinching, biting, or cutting with two meeting edges of anything; to clip. The small shoots ... must be nipped off. Mortimer.
  2. 3.Hence: To blast, as by frost; to check the growth or vigor of; to destroy.
  3. 4.To vex or pain, as by nipping; hence, to taunt. And sharp remorse his heart did prick and nip. Spenser. To nip in the bud, to cut off at the verycommencement of growth; to kill in the incipient stage.
  4. 5.A seizing or closing in upon; a pinching; as, in the northern seas, the nip of masses of ice.
  5. 6.A pinch with the nails or teeth.
  6. 7.A small cut, or a cutting off the end.
  7. 8.A blast; a killing of the ends of plants by frost.
  8. 9.A biting sarcasm; a taunt. Latimer.
  9. 10.(Naut.) A short turn in a rope. Nip and tuck, a phrase signifying equality in a contest. [Low, U.S.]

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