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Nick   /nɪk/   Listen
noun
Nick  n.  (Northern Myth.) An evil spirit of the waters.
Old Nick, the evil one; the devil. (Colloq.)


Nick  n.  
1.
A notch cut into something; as:
(a)
A score for keeping an account; a reckoning. (Obs.)
(b)
(Print.) A notch cut crosswise in the shank of a type, to assist a compositor in placing it properly in the stick, and in distribution.
2.
Hence: A broken or indented place in any edge or surface; as, nicks in a china plate; a nick in the table top.
3.
A particular point or place considered as marked by a nick; the exact point or critical moment. "To cut it off in the very nick." "This nick of time is the critical occasion for the gaining of a point."


verb
Nick  v. t.  (past & past part. nicked; pres. part. nicking)  
1.
To make a nick or nicks in; to notch; to keep count of or upon by nicks; as, to nick a stick, tally, etc.
2.
To mar; to deface; to make ragged, as by cutting nicks or notches in; to create a nick (2) in, deliberately or accidentally; as, to nick the rim of a teacup. "And thence proceed to nicking sashes." "The itch of his affection should not then Have nicked his captainship."
3.
To suit or fit into, as by a correspondence of nicks; to tally with. "Words nicking and resembling one another are applicable to different significations."
4.
To hit at, or in, the nick; to touch rightly; to strike at the precise point or time. "The just season of doing things must be nicked, and all accidents improved."
5.
To make a cross cut or cuts on the under side of (the tail of a horse, in order to make him carry it higher).


Nick  v. t.  To nickname; to style. (Obs.) "For Warbeck, as you nick him, came to me."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Nick" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the nick of time and slipped away from him. But she didn't fly far. So Tommy followed. And he stole up very slyly; and once more, when he was quite near the old ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the family of the Horeszkos: of which fact the memory is still famous among men. My boy, rarely does a bookkeeper on an estate mend pens so deftly as this penknife cleaves heads: it were long to count them! And noses and ears without number! But there is not a single nick upon it, and no murderous deed has ever stained it, but only open war, or a duel. Only once!—may the Lord give him eternal rest!—an unarmed man, alas, fell beneath its edge! But even that, God is my witness, was pro ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... very day; and were also engaged on that day in drawing out the lists and testing the men for the other army: whereby it so happened that a large number of men had been collected in Rome spontaneously in the very nick of time. These troops the Consuls boldly led outside the walls, and, entrenching themselves there, checked Hannibal's intended movement. For the Carthaginians were at first eager to advance, and were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... us, a form of knife which is used for the most delicate operations known in surgery. And it was to be used for a delicate operation that night. You must know, with your wide experience of turf matters, Colonel Ross, that it is possible to make a slight nick upon the tendons of a horse's ham, and to do it subcutaneously, so as to leave absolutely no trace. A horse so treated would develop a slight lameness, which would be put down to a strain in exercise or a touch of rheumatism, but never ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Sir Redvers Buller, to whom the Boers, by a play of words, had given a somewhat disrespectful nick-name. He had not been long in Natal before his chance came. I must, however, be silent about his successes and his failures, for, as I left Natal on the 9th of December, I had no personal experience of his methods. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet


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