nest

NEST/nɛst/

20 meanings of nest

1
nouncountable
A structure that a bird builds to hold its eggs and raise its young.
The eagle returned to its nest high on the cliff face.
Sparrows wove a nest from twigs and dried grass under the eaves.
Note
The sense every other one grows from, and its history holds a small picture. Proto-Indo-European *nisdós meant literally "where the bird sits down." It joins *ni "down," the same element behind English nether, to the root *sed- "to sit." So a nest is, at bottom, a sitting-down place. The word has kept its shape through Middle and Old English.
2
verbintransitive
To build a nest, or to settle snugly into a place to rest.
Many seabirds nest on steep coastal cliffs to avoid predators.
The cat circled twice before nesting into the warm blanket.
Similarbreed, settle, snuggle, burrow
Note
The verb has its own pedigree rather than being made from the noun. It comes from Old English nistan, nistian, from a West Germanic verb meaning "to build a nest." Its close kin include German nisten and Dutch nesten. At its core it is intransitive and used of animals: birds nest on cliffs. Applied to people, it shades into settling into a home.
3
nouncountable
A snug, comfortable home or a secure, easy job situation.
The cottage became a quiet nest where the couple spent their retirement.
He had settled into a comfortable nest at the firm and had no plans to leave.
Similarhaven, retreat, refuge, niche
4
nouncountable
The family home that a child or young adult shares with a parent or guardian.
Like fledglings staying put until their wings are strong enough to carry them off.
He finally flew the nest at twenty-two and rented an apartment downtown.
Their daughter returned to the nest after finishing college.
Note
Mostly heard in the idiom of leaving it. To leave the nest, or fly it, is to move out of the parental home for the first time. The image comes straight from the bird's nest, which young birds quit once they can fly. The phrase therefore frames moving out as a natural stage of growing up rather than a rupture.
5
nouncountable
A place where a fish, amphibian, insect, or monotreme lays its eggs and where the young hatch.
Some catfish guard a nest of eggs until the fry hatch.
The platypus laid her eggs deep inside a burrow nest.
6
verbtransitive
To place one thing neatly inside another, and both inside yet another, and so on.
Engineers nest the components tightly to reduce wasted space.
He carefully nested each cup inside the next before sealing the crate.
Similarfit, stack
Note
Its past participle has become an adjective in its own right: nested boxes, and in computing nested loops and nested subroutine calls. Together those make up a loop or subroutine nest. In everyday use the verb takes a plain object, as in you could have nested all the empty boxes.
7
verbintransitive
To fit one inside another in succession, each piece sitting within the next.
Good camping pots nest inside one another, so the whole set packs into the largest.
Each container nests inside the next, saving shelf space.
Similarfit
Note
The -ing form works as an adjective for sets designed to stack this way, as in nesting mixing bowls. Here the verb is intransitive: the bowls themselves nest. By contrast, its transitive partner has someone doing the fitting.
8
nouncountable
A set of boxes, cases, or similar items of graduated size, each fitting within the next larger one.
A nest of tables stood beside the sofa, ready to be pulled apart for guests.
He stored his tools in a nest of metal cases that fit one inside another.
9
nouncountable
A hideout or den where criminals and other dangerous people gather.
The waterfront tavern was known as a nest of smugglers and cutthroats.
Investigators uncovered a nest of forgers operating behind the print shop.
Similarden, lair, hideout
Note
A disparaging use that cares about who gathers more than where. It runs in the pattern nest of plus a plural or mass noun: a nest of thieves, of rogues, of wickedness. Charles Johnson's 1724 account of Captain Edward England and his crew wants to destroy "such a Nest of Rogues." In Life of Frances Power Cobbe (1895), Bow Street constables find no greater nest of wickedness in all London. Lightly, it can simply mock: a nest of strange people.
10
nouncountable
A retreat or favorite place that someone returns to again and again.
The corner café became a nest for the writers who gathered there each afternoon.
He retreated to his garden nest with a book every evening.
Similarhaunt, retreat, hideaway, den

11
verbintransitive
To settle comfortably into a place and make it feel like home.
Many people nest during the cold months, filling their homes with blankets and comfort.
After years abroad, he finally nested in a town he could call his own.
Similarsettle, cocoon
Note
Here the bird's verb is borrowed for people. Old English nistan meant to build a nest, and settling into a home is pictured as the same work. The verb takes no object: you nest in a place, or nest there, often in the progressive (we were nesting within days). To put something else into a snug spot, use its transitive counterpart instead.
12
verbtransitive
To place something in, or as if in, a nest.
Volunteers nest the rescued chicks in lined boxes each spring.
The jeweler nested each gemstone in a velvet-lined tray.
Similarplace, settle, bed
13
nouncountable
A fortified or sheltered position from which a weapon, especially a machine gun, is fired.
The platoon advanced cautiously toward the concrete nest overlooking the valley.
Snipers had established a nest in the bombed-out tower.
Similaremplacement, position, post
Note
A soldier's word that usually comes with the weapon named in front of it, as in a machine gun nest. The modifier tells the reader what the post shelters. The noun borrows the bird's tucked-away, defended shelter for a small fortified position.
14
nouncountable
An arrangement of structures contained one within another, such as loops enclosed by loops or subroutine calls invoked within other calls.
Debugging the routine meant tracing a deep nest of function calls.
Each loop sat within a larger one, forming a nest three levels deep.
Note
In computing the noun usually follows a word naming what is nested: a loop nest, a subroutine nest. The structure has to be unwound in order. Donnamaie E. White's Bit-Slice Design (1981) notes that a subroutine cannot jump out of the nest in one step. Each return address must be popped from the stack in turn, so the routine climbs out one level at a time.
15
nouncountable
A circular bed of pasta, rice, or similar food, shaped to be topped or filled with other ingredients.
The pasta was twirled into a neat nest and crowned with seafood.
Each plate featured a nest of saffron rice holding braised lamb.
Similarbed
16
nouncountable
A compact cluster of mechanical parts (pulleys, gears, or springs) assembled to work together as a unit.
Engineers replaced the worn nest of pulleys that drove the conveyor belt.
Inside the mechanism sat a delicate nest of springs controlling the timing.
Similarcluster, assembly
17
nouncountable
An isolated, aggregated mass of ore or mineral occurring as a concentrated pocket within surrounding rock.
The survey revealed a nest of high-grade ore embedded in the granite.
Prospectors traced several mineral nests scattered through the formation.
Similarpocket, deposit
Note
A geologist's term for ore that occurs in pockets rather than in a continuous run. The isolation is the point: the mass sits enclosed in the rock around it. A prospector who finds a nest of ore has found a local concentration, not a seam that can be followed.
18
nouncountable
A fixed set of cards in certain bidding games, awarded to the highest bidder, who may exchange any or all of them with cards from their hand.
After winning the auction, he turned over the nest and reshaped his hand.
The nest held two strong trumps that secured the contract.
Similarkitty, widow
Note
A card-table word for the cards set aside before play and handed to whoever wins the bidding. Because the winner sees them only after bidding, the nest can overturn a plan. Finding the ace, jack and nine of diamonds there can force a change of trumps. Players speak of what is in the nest and of turning it over.
19
verbintransitive
To search for birds' nests or the eggs and young inside them, usually in the phrase go nesting.
As a boy he went nesting along the hedgerows and kept a list of every egg he found.
Old farmers still talk about going nesting in the spring when they were boys.
Note
Almost always heard as go nesting, where the -ing form names an outing much as go fishing does. Alfred Emanuel Smith and Francis Walton (1895) describe taking a friend into partnership and going nesting after the first heavy frost. Without go, a sentence like they nest in the woods would be heard as the nest-building verb.
20
nounslangvulgarUScountable
A vulgar slang term for the pubic hair near a vulva, or the vulva itself.
He bragged drunkenly about what he had glimpsed of her nest.
The comedian's joke about a woman's nest drew groans from the audience.
Similarbeaver
Note
Vulgar slang, now a US usage, in the same family as beaver and beav. It belongs to crude joking and carries an objectifying edge, so it has no neutral or polite use. In ordinary or medical contexts, pubic hair and vulva are the words to reach for. The image is borrowed from the bird's nest.

Practice

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Origins

Meanings 1, 3–5, 8–10, 13–18, 20

From Middle English nest, from Old English nest, going back through Proto-Germanic to Proto-Indo-European *nisdós ("nest"), literally "where [the bird] sits down": a compound of *ni ("down," source of English nether) and the root *sed- ("to sit," source of English sit).

Meanings 2, 6–7, 11–12, 19

From Middle English nesten, from Old English nistan, from Proto-West Germanic *nistijan ("to nest, build a nest"), related to Dutch nesten and German nisten ("to nest").