nickel
Plural: nickels
Noun
- a hard malleable ductile silvery metallic element that is resistant to corrosion; used in alloys; occurs in pentlandite and smaltite and garnierite and millerite
- a United States coin worth one twentieth of a dollar
- five dollars worth of a drug
- "a nickel bag of drugs"
- "a nickel deck of heroin"
- A silvery elemental metal with an atomic number of 28 and symbol Ni.
- A coin worth 5 cents.
- Five dollars.
- Five hundred dollars.
- Interstate 5, a highway that runs along the west coast of the United States.
- A playing card with the rank of five
- A five-year prison sentence.
- A defensive formation with five defensive backs, one of whom is a nickelback, instead of the more-common four.
- An airborne propaganda leaflet.
Verb
Verb Forms: nickeld, nickeling, nickels, nickelled, nickelling
- To plate something with a thin layer of nickel.
- plate with nickel
- "nickel the plate"
- To plate with nickel.
- To distribute airborne leaflet propaganda.
Adj
- Synonym of cheap: Low price and/or low value.
Examples
- He decided to nickel and dime his opponent, playing many small words for consistent points.
- Let me give you the nickel tour of the office.
Origin / Etymology
Borrowed from German Nickel, first used in a text by the Swedish mineralogist Axel F. Cronstedt as an abbreviation of Kupfernickel (“a mineral containing copper and nickel”), from Kupfer (“copper”) + Nickel (“insignificant person, goblin”), originally nickname of Nikolaus (“Nicholas”), due to the deceptive silver colour of the relatively valueless ore. Compare cobalt as related to kobolds.
Scrabble Score: 12
nickel: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordnickel: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
nickel: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary