nib

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See also: Nib, NIB, and ní b'

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
A fountain pen nib.
Cocoa nibs

Alternative forms

Etymology

From a variant of neb, perhaps due to association with nibble.

Pronunciation

Noun

nib (plural nibs)

  1. The tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper.
    • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:
      Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them.
    • 2025 April 20, Sam Jones, “‘Their pursuits are the cigar and the siesta’: how two centuries of British writers helped forge our view of Spain”, in The Observer‎, →ISSN:
      Ford, whose often acid nib belied a deep love of all things Iberian, is one of 20 British authors profiled in a new Spanish book […] .
  3. (now dialectal) A bird's beak.
    Alternative form: neb
    Synonyms: bill, pecker
  4. Bits of trapped dust or other foreign material that form imperfections in painted or varnished surfaces.
  5. A piece of a roasted, hulled cocoa bean.
  6. A small and pointed thing or part; a point; a prong.
  7. One of the handles projecting from a scythe snath.
    Synonym: thole
  8. The shaft of a wagon.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

nib (third-person singular simple present nibs, present participle nibbing, simple past and past participle nibbed)

  1. (transitive) To fit (a pen) with a nib.
    • 1820, James Henry Lewis, The best method of pen-making:
      In nibbing the pen, place the inside of the point flat upon the nail of your left-hand thumb (holding the quill between the first and second finger of that hand), and let the whole length of the split be extended thereon, to steady the pen as much as possible […]

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