nested

1. 1
   adjective

   Fitted one inside another in succession, so each piece sits within the next larger one.

   The camping kit includes nested pots that pack into one compact bundle.

   Matryoshka dolls are nested, each figure opening to reveal a smaller one inside.

2. 2
   adjective

   Embedded; set or contained within something larger rather than attached to its surface.

   The folk tale has a nested story tucked inside the main narrative.

   Geologists discovered a crystal nested deep within the volcanic rock.

   Similarembedded, enclosed

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of nest.

   Storks nested atop the village chimneys every summer.

   The functions were nested inside one another to organize the code.

   Note

   A regular -ed form that does double duty for the verb's intransitive and transitive uses. Storks nested on the chimneys because they settled there; the functions were nested because someone placed one inside another. The passive participle is where the one-inside-another adjective comes from: once nobody is doing the nesting, the participle simply describes an arrangement. A collector who went nesting, by contrast, was out hunting birds' nests.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of a word or phrase: included within another word's dictionary entry as a subordinate term rather than given its own headword.

   Derived forms are often nested under the base word rather than listed separately.

   In older dictionaries, idioms appeared as nested entries beneath the main verb.

   Note

   A lexicographer's word for terms that sit inside another word's entry instead of heading their own. It keeps company with sub-headword. In "Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English" (2012), James Lambert counts "sub-headwords and other nested lexical items" toward a dictionary's total of terms but leaves variants out. A nested item still counts as a term in its own right. It simply has no headword line.

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