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Nick   Listen
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).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nick" Quotes from Famous Books



... he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard. "That man's wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of time,—just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions against him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those children. I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... Bower Bird is an extensive builder; it not only builds its nest in a tree but it builds a palace on the ground in the shape of a bower hut, furnishes it with nick-nacks such as shells, bones, pieces of mineral, metals, bright parrots' feathers and other trifles. What the English magpie would steal and hide away the Bower Bird openly decorates his pavilion with. Often several birds collect together and play like children, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... be cursed himself, and felt the bracelet with his fingernail. He had made a deep nick in the soft gold. A second ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... nick of fortune? Do you know that a sub-lieutenancy is vacant in my company? Sub-lieutenant, with rank of a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... right," declared Mrs. Billing, with a sniff. "I sha'n't forget last Tuesday week—no, not if I live to be a hundred. You'd ha' brightened up the police-station if I 'adn't got you home just in the nick of time." ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... "Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said, quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not going West with Bantry, but there's three other ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... light turned them for an instant into a shower of diamonds; then down it fell, down, down! As in its descent it passed the bridge on which we stood, the shadows of our two figures rushed up the opposite wall, like a pair of demons scared out of their abode by the hissing flame; and Nick, the guide, as he leaned over, looking downward after it,—every one of the innumerable wrinkles in his black face made more distinct, with his white beard and mustache, and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow in the blue elfish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... Beethoven came on the world's stage "just in the nick of time," and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself. He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking. Stirring times they were in which he first saw the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... 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 ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... "You see, Nick," he concluded, "with an adjustable light-key enabling them to open any lock in the solar system, nothing is safe. Personally, I think it's only because they haven't a larger or faster ship and aren't better armed that they haven't ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... am going to become a combination of Nick Carter and Sherlock Holmes, and my first efforts will be directed toward finding out who and what Mr. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... had come in the nick of time before, even so now. We swooped all unexpected on the rear of the Wassmuss men, taking ourselves by surprise as much as them, for we had thought the fight yet miles away. Echoes make great confusion in the mountains. It was ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... river after the swans), proceed up the Thames to mark the young swans hatched during the year. The Dyers' Company and the Vintners' Company also own swans in the Thames, which were granted to them in olden times. The Vintners' mark for their swans is a nick or notch on each side of the beak, from which their swans have been called, merrily, "swans with two necks" (nicks). Perhaps you have heard of an inn, which has a swan with two necks as a sign; now you will understand how it came ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... should try it. To my astonishment I find that the action is brought on a wager as to the mode of playing an illegal, disreputable, and mischievous game called 'Hazard;' whether, allowing seven to be the main, and eleven to be a nick to seven, there are more ways than six of nicking seven on the dice? Courts of justice are constituted to try rights and redress injuries, not to solve the problems of the gamesters. The gentlemen of the jury and I may ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... and such other like games, cutting at the nick, is a great aduantage, so is cutting by Bumcard, finely vnder or ouer: stealing the ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid

... page, About twelve years of age, For so little a boy was remarkably sage; And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement, Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement. But all would not do,—Though St. Megrin got through The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew. And though never man ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... you," said his uncle. "You know now what your nick-name will be. Every boy has one or another: and yours might have been worse, because you might have done many a worse ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau

... kept in confinement whose moustaches were "remarkably long and human-like." Altogether this old monkey presented a ludicrous resemblance to one of the reigning monarchs of Europe, after whom he was universally nick-named. In certain races of man the hair on the head hardly ever becomes grey; thus Mr. D. Forbes has never, as he informs me, seen an instance with the Aymaras and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... once more, then allowed his mouth to expand in that contortion which had won him the nick name of "Danny Grin." ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... the half-knit stocking, but the spare needle was missing. She felt with her hand upon the chimney-piece, but could not find it. Then she mounted a chair and searched. It was nowhere to be seen. "It may have slipped into the nick at the back," she thought, and she got a skewer and poked it into the narrow groove. Out fell the needle—and something else which made a clinking sound as it fell upon the brick floor. She stooped to see what ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... wi' its jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... In mists and shadows of the night time. "Sire," Said Waterman, his agitable wick Still sputtering, "what calls you back so quick? It scarcely was a century ago You left us." "I have come to bring," said Nick, "St. Peter's answer (he is never slow In correspondence) to your application For ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... corns night and morning for three days. Soak the feet every evening in warm water without soap. Put one-third of the acid into the water, and with a little picking the corn will be dissolved. 2. Take a lemon, cut off a small piece, then nick it so as to let in the toe with the corn, tie this on at night so that it cannot move, and in the morning you will find that, with a blunt knife, you may remove a considerable portion of the corn. Make ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... it seemed as if every team in the province was at work, and all the countrymen were running mad on junipers. Perhaps no livin' soul ever see such a beautiful collection of ship-timber afore, and I am sure never will again in a crow's age. The way these 'old oysters' (a nick-name I gave the islanders, on account of their everlastin' beds of this shell-fish) opened their mugs and gaped was a caution ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... can't take care of myself and therefore he must take care of me, but that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the sort which other people rub in, but the next day ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... do. I was just able to catch you in the nick of time, and now I have done my part, and you must leave the rest ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... sword—you may draw it and feel, For this is the blade that I bore that day— There's a notch even now on the long grey steel, A nick that has never been rasp'd away. I bow'd my head and I buried my spurs, One bound brought the gliding green beneath; I could tell by her back-flung, flatten'd ears, She had fairly taken the bit in her teeth— (What, Jack, have you drain'd your namesake ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... in the Opera House that it occurred, and for an hour it had seemed that he could not place his money on a card without making the card a winner. In the lull at the end of a deal, while the game-keeper was shuffling the deck, Nick Inwood the owner of the game, remarked, apropos ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... of the Austrian Columns was just entering Panten when the Fight began: in Panten that Column has stood cogitative ever since; well to left of Loudon and his struggles; but does not, till the eleventh hour, resolve to push through. At the eleventh hour;—and lo, in the nick of time, Mollendorf (our Leuthen-and-Hochkirch friend) got his eye on it; rushed up with infantry and cavalry; set Panten on fire, and blocked out that possibility and the too ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... right bower, and I thinks as how this guy is the joker of the deck trying to make a dirty deuce out of me. But, if you want to see the girl, she's right upstairs. His work was a little speedy on first acquaintance. Nick, keep your eyes on this machine, for we may get another call on this floor—This way gentlemen. Watch your step, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... cut out a portion of the driving apparatus. We could not repair that, though we did succeed at last in lifting the great discs into place. We attempted to cut them, and put them back in sections. Our finest saws and machines did not nick them. Their weight was unbelievable, and yet we finally succeeded in lifting the things into the wall of the ship. The actual missing material did not represent more than a tiny cut, perhaps as wide as one of your credit-discs. You could slip the thin piece of metal in between them, but ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... the chimney; but if he did, what happened? Why, I had my counter-spy, an honest little Irish boy, in the creditor's shop, that I had secured with a little douceur of usquebaugh; and he outwitted, as was natural, the English lying valet, and gave us notice, just in the nick, and I got ready for their reception; and, Miss Nugent, I only wish you'd seen the excellent sport we had, letting them follow the scent they got; and when they were sure of their game, what did they find?—Ha! ha! ha!—dragged out, after a world of labour, a heavy box ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... and fought Cormac for a time: Narfi the while skulked and dodged behind them. Thorkel saw from his house that they were getting but slowly forward, and he took his weapons. In that nick of time Steingerd came out and saw what her father meant. She laid hold on his hands, and he got no nearer to help the brothers. In the end Odd fell, and Gudmund was so wounded that he died afterwards. Thorkel saw to them, and Cormac ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... boy heard a disturbance behind him, and turned, just in the nick of time. A fellow had thrust his way through the crowd toward him, a rowdy with a brutal, half-drunken face. And Samuel saw him raise his hand, with some dark object in it, and aim a smashing blow ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... testicles of a man or beast; also a vulgar nick name for a parson. His brains are in his ballocks, a cant saying to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... charm to dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... been just as well if the rattlesnake coiled in his path at that moment had ended his existence, but the snake was indeed an honorable highwayman, and sounded a gentlemanly warning in the nick of time. Collins would have killed it for its pains, but killing had upset his nerves that day. So he left the reptile to try its fangs on a better man. Besides, he reflected that he could not consistently ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... us with his clothes torn to tatters, and his hat and gun gone. He presented a curious picture. I heard the burghers jeer and chaff him as he approached, and called out to him: "What on earth have you been up to? It looks as if you had seen old Nick with a ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... said you had and stuck to it, it would have been ten times better than what you did," Naughten retorted. "Now they'll tell the whole school—and Beetle'll make up a lot of beastly rhymes and nick-names." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... sense of wonder in her pounding heart, and signed her name just as Ellen's heavy footsteps could be heard pounding down the back stairs. Leslie seized Julia, and gave her a great hug as the last letter was finished, and then threw open the parlor door in the nick of time to save her Aunt Ellen ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... Old Nick, who taught the village school, Wedded a maid of homespun habit; He was as stubborn as a mule, She was as ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... shuddered to think of them. Just opposite her room, above the roofs, the lightning conductor of the museum was always on fire. In the sitting-room she had her own window—a deep recess as big as a room itself—where her work-table and personal nick-nacks stood. It was there that her mother had taught her to read; it was there that, later on, she had fallen asleep while listening to her masters, so greatly did the fatigue of learning daze her. And now she made fun of her own ignorance; she was a well-educated young lady, and no ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... boys were on 73. By Gridley's orders, the two Ruffords and some others turned an engine loose to run down the road for a head-ender with the freight that was bringing the soldiers. Dawson chased the runaway engine with the coupled-up Nadia outfit, caught it just in the nick of time to prevent a collision with 73, and brought it back. He's down in the car now, with one of the young women ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... broad flight of stairs which led to the upper story. At the head of it was a door; he tried it; it was not locked but yielded to his push. It opened into a bed-room, luxuriously furnished with mirrors, and various nick-nacks, and articles of taste, such as a young and wealthy female gathers about her; and in the bed lay a beautiful girl, the original of the picture below, sound asleep, her long hair, which had become unbound as she slept, lying in loose tresses upon the pillow. How bright and beautiful she was! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... two or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... My gough, it was like a bugle spaking. There's nobody can spake but himself. When the others are toot-tooting, it's just 'Polly, put the kettle on' (mimicking a mincing treble). See the lil Puffin on his throne of turf there? Looked as if Ould Nick had been thrashing peas on his face for ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... himself shivering as he spoke the words, "what in old Nick's name has got under us? Be it a whale that's bumpin' its back against ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... Aurelian is designated by a soldier under the nick-name of 'Hand-to-his-Sword.' Vopiscus also mentions this as a name by which he was known in the army. 'Nam quum essent in exercitu duo Aureliani tribuni, hic, et alius qui cum Valeriano captus est, huic signum (cognomen) exercitus ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... little boy went weeping out of the room, "he'll never learn anything so long as he lives. I declare he has tired me all out, and I used to teach school in Trivoli township, too. Taught one whole winter in district number three when Nick Worthington was county superintendent, and had my salary—look here, Mary, what do you find in that English grammar to giggle about? You go to bed, too, and listen to me—if Rollo can't read that ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... Priscilla, without seeming to glance up from her sewing, "Sergeant,—your hat!" Hereupon, the Sergeant gave a sudden, sideways jerk of the head, and, in the very nick of time, saved the article in question from tumbling off, and very dexterously brought it to the top of his close-cropped head, whence it immediately began, slowly, and by scarcely perceptible degrees to slide down to his ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... she was glad of the interruption. She had said just enough to pique curiosity. To tell more would have been bad policy all around. Betty Wales had arrived just in the nick of time. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... new-fallen snow Gave a lustre of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be Saint Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted, and called them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Dennis. Ould Nick fly away with the roof of it! I took the remainder of the lease, per advice of my bride, Mrs. Brulgruddery: laid out her goodlooking hundred pound for the furniture, and the goodwill; bought three pigs, that are going into a consumption; took ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick, triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood every time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye, on the end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... to admire most, the beautiful work and etchy spirit of the mountainous foreground, the minuteness and delicacy of the distant city, or the actual brightness of the Firth of Forth broken by the "noble breast-work of Salisbury Crags and the point of the Cat's nick." The Crags, it will be recollected, are about 550 feet above the level of the Firth of Forth: a few sheep lie scattered about them, and the part of Arthur's Seat on the left; the straggling pedestrians in the path to the Cat Nick are of emmet-like proportions. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... my third season here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's Valley either." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... you have nick'd the Matter. To have him peach'd is the only thing could ever make ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... psychologic expression. He notes it with so hasty a pencil, that one might almost say that he writes with colour. He is also an etcher of great merit, and an original sculptor. He has invented small bas-reliefs in bronze which can be attached to the wall, like sketches or nick-nacks; and he has applied his talent even to renewing the material for painting. He is an ingenious artist and a prolific producer, a roguish, but sympathetic, observer of the life of the small people, which has not ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... he had wrenched himself loose from Zita's arms and was struggling with the ropes that still bound him even after he had managed to roll out from under the elevator in the last nick of time. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... there was great game up? I was just wanting some one to help me. Met you in the nick ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... they knew before-hand what such a Doctor would prescribe, and hence it is they have nick-named some Physicians of no mean practice, by the Medicines they frequently use, which names in respect to the persons, I shall conceal; and of such Physicians, they brag they can prescribe as well as they. But if a Physician ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett

... Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him, if I can hit the nick of time." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... right time, Clara," Hard said. "A little earlier and we might not have had the wisdom to fall in love again with each other; a little later and we might have felt too old and dignified to think of it. I consider that we took things in the nick of time." ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... precisely on what day, but probably the most glorious one in Akakiy Akakievitch's life, when Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. He seemed fully sensible ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... Indeed ejaculated Bernard we have come in the nick of time Ethel he added. Yes said Ethel in an ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford

... a crisis, this difficulty was removed in the most extraordinary and providential unheard-of manner, by the most extraordinary event that, I believe, is recorded in history. Just in the nick of time, in the moment of projection, on the 3d of July, this Prince Meeran, in the flower of his age, bold, active, enterprising, lying asleep in his tent, is suddenly, without any one's knowing it, without any alarm or menace in the heavens that ever was heard of or mentioned, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... metal dust on slip-rings so that the current will leak or short circuits will occur. When a motor is idle, nick the slip-rings with ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... has by some been supposed traceable to 'Old Nick'; but this is not probable, since St. Nicholas has been the patron-saint of sailors for many centuries. It was during the time of the Crusades that a vessel on the way to the Holy Land was in great peril, and St. Nicholas assuaged a tempest by ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... Farlow who gave Mullally his nick-name. (It was the time of the Boer War, and the nick-name came easily enough.) "He isn't a man," said Gilbert; "he's ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... on beholding it, shivered with dread, And screamed, as he turned away quick; Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head, Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said, "God help me from ugly old Nick!" ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... floor an' begins to claw on his duds, allowin', bein' he's only half awake that a-way, that it's a passel of them murderin' Clay Whigs who's come to crawl his hump for shore. But she's a false alarm. It's only a Dom'nick rooster who's been perched all night on my grandfather's wrist where his arm sticks outen bed, an' who's done crowed a whole lot, as is his habit when he glints the comin' day. It's them sort o' things that sends a shudder through you, an' shows what ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... him. Then I considered him unnecessarily concerned about me—"a fussy old hen," as one of the boys suggested. The invitation from Jack Dale, a distant cousin, to spend a summer with him on his ranch in South Alberta came in the nick of time. I was wild to go. My guardian hesitated long; but no other solution of the problem of my disposal offering, he finally agreed that I could not well get into more trouble by going than by ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... largest of these, belonging to Joseph Storer, was surrounded by a palisade, and occupied by fifteen armed men, under Captain Convers, an officer of militia. On the ninth of June, two sloops and a sail-boat ran up the neighboring creek, bringing supplies and fourteen more men. The succor came in the nick of time. The sloops had scarcely anchored, when a number of cattle were seen running frightened and wounded from the woods. It was plain that an enemy was lurking there. All the families of the place now gathered within the palisades of ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... gain, That Pope had hoped to find Rome here again; For Oaths and Blasphemies did ever Ear From Belzebub himself such language hear? What scorning of the saints of the most high, What injuries did daily on them lye, What false reports, what nick-names did they take Not for their own ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... and Divine were elated at the luck which had brought them to Honolulu in the nick of time, and at the success of Theriere's mission at that port. They had figured upon a week at least there before the second officer of the Halfmoon could ingratiate himself sufficiently into the goodwill of the Hardings to learn their plans, and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Tennessee is now clear of armed insurrectionists. You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal State government. Not a moment should be lost. You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I only offer a few suggestions. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... cradle where the race was rocked— All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked. Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet, Played the children by canals, up and down the street. Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,— Little Nick of Leyden ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... taking out a large old watch, with an enamelled back— doubtless more German than its master—he said, as he lifted up his carpet-bag, "I must be off—tempos fugit, and I must arrive just in time to nick the vessels. Shall get to Ostend, or Rotterdam, safe and snug; thence to Paris. How my pretty Fan will have grown! Ah, you don't know Fan—make you a nice little wife one of these days! Cheer up, man, we shall meet again. Be sure of it; and hark ye, that strange place, as you call ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels of enterprise, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... of age before I stole any money, or got into any trouble; but I used to 'nick' little things, such as fruit, &c., when I was a kid. My father kept a small shop, but I was bound an apprentice to a very peculiar branch of the Sheffield trade; and before I had finished my apprenticeship I committed my first crime. I was playing at bagatelle one night, and lost all my cash, and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... at whose elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the Tempter were there, 35 His presence he would not abide. Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil, In your carriage you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. Approaching within a sword's length, for he was not deficient either ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... gloomily, "but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—n fellows turns up from ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... to his back door, whence, as from every point of Calistoga, Mount Saint Helena could be seen towering in the air. There, in the nick, just where the eastern foothills joined the mountain, and she herself began to rise above the zone of forest— there was Silverado. The name had already pleased me; the high station pleased me still more. I began to inquire with some eagerness. It was but a little while ago that Silverado ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pistols were properly loaded and primed, had resumed all his wonted coolness in danger. "Ask that fellow who is enacting the statue on the top of the rock what he wants. I am a tolerable shot, you know; and if he means evil, I shall nick him before he can carry his carabine to his shoulder, take my ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... round," he said. So the morning was spent in impressing everyone with his shiny black suit of West-of-England broadcloth and his beautiful neckcloth and bunch of seals. But in the evening he climbed the pulpit; and there Old Nick himself, that lies in wait for preachers, must have tempted the poor fellow to preach on Womanly Perfection, taking his text ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... roared Tom Fillot just in the nick of time; and, striking out fiercely with his dirk, Mark returned to his men and released poor Dance, who was one of the weakest, by giving his assailant a ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... slightly to the other men, and let the portiere close behind her. It had been as dramatic an entrance and exit as the two visitors had ever seen upon the stage. It was as if Aram had given a signal, and the only person who could help him had come in the nick of time to plead for him. Aram, stupid as he appeared to be, had evidently felt the effect his wife's appearance had made upon his judges. He still kept his eyes fixed upon the floor, but he said, and this time with more ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... girl of sixteen years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named "Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... evening. The people groaned and hissed, and pelted the figures as they passed. At length the procession reached a common which had been selected for the purpose, and on which a gallows had been erected. There the effigy was hung, and then taken down and burnt. In the fire, the figure of old Nick was arranged with one hand upon Arnold's head, and the other pointing below, while he grinned ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... Nick," observed one of the men, as he shut the stove, after carefully packing several cord-wood sticks within its ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... the summit of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... Evson; Evson, a new fellow," answered Kenrick, Henderson, and all who knew him, as fast as they could, in reply to the general queries. They were proud to know him just then, and this little triumph occurred in the nick of time to raise poor Walter ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... to say that "The Skipper," as his father always called him, was Bob, otherwise Robert Trevor; and Dot, so nick-named for reasons plain to see, was by rights Dorothy, and they had that morning been excused from lessons, because Captain Trevor had sent a message from Portsmouth that he was going to run ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... Here lies poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly through life he trotted, Along the path that faith allotted, Till time, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... be made as to who was the smart chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers became wary and read Enterprise items twice before clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to other matters to lull suspicion. The great "Dutch Nick Massacre" did not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... now, George. You know I said I'd stick by you to the bitter end; and nobody ever knew Nick Longfellow ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... finger against one of the steps of our stairs, and in the aperture of our doorway appears an idiot, clad in a suit of gray tweed, who bows low. "Come in, come in, M. Kangourou. How well you come, just in the nick of time! I was actually becoming enthusiastic over ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... readers may sympathize with my enthusiasm when they consider the dangers to be encountered, after three days of constant anxiety and little sleep, in threading our way through a swarm of blockaders, and the accuracy required to hit in the nick of time the mouth of a river only half a mile wide, without lights and with a coast-line so low and featureless that, as a rule, the first intimation we had of its nearness was the dim white ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... are not," again interrupted John Jr., "'Lena is just what she seems to be. There's no deception in her. She isn't one thing to-day and another to-morrow. Spunky as the old Nick, you know, but still she governs her temper admirably, and between you and me, I know I'm a better man than I should have been had she never come to live with us. How well I remember the first time I saw her," he continued, repeating to Durward the particulars of their interview ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... battle lines to do so. The Confederate Commander, divining his intention, poured a galling fire into his ranks and began a race with him for the heights. Keyes won the race and formed his line in the nick of time. The tremendous fire poured down from this new position was too much for the assaulting Southern column and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... pause, said: "By Jove! how lucky, Miss Daisy. You've come in the nick of time. Just finished our pool. Now you and Mrs. Halton shall play a single and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... & non pour le Dames de Honeur d' vser: Ie ne voudray pronouncer ce mots deuant le Seigneurs de France, pour toute le monde, fo le Foot & le Count, neant moys, Ie recitera vn autrefoys ma lecon ensembe, d' Hand, de Fingre, de Nayles, d' Arme, d' Elbow, de Nick, de Sin, de ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... you they'd soon find the fair lady was shaded by her fine laces. I daresay now she's on the look-out for a good match, poor thing! Not that Helen is handsome—don't look in the glass, Helen, child! My grandmother always said that Old Nick stood behind every young lady's shoulder when she looked in the glass, with a rouge-pot all ready to make her look handsomer in her own eyes than she really was; which shows how wicked it is to look much in a glass. Only a little sometimes, Nell, darling—we'll forgive her for ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... the glisten of the sunlight on the river, and the crimson of the hard maples stained by the first early frost, and she knew it was not the sunshine nor the tingle in the air nor the beautiful way in which Ned and Nick flew along stride for stride over the hard white road, but something else, something quite different, which had made her glad that Sunday morning. She looked straight ahead and tried to imagine that not the wooden English ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster



Words linked to "Nick" :   St. Nick, snick, vernacular, notch, change, modify, United Kingdom, slang, ding, dent, Old Nick, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, copulate, dig, patois, U.K., mate, prison house, lingo, mar, alter, defect, Saint Nick, cutting, prison, cant, couple, cut, jargon, chip, blemish, gouge, Great Britain, Britain, pair, UK, argot



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