nesting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The process by which a bird builds a nest and raises its young.

   Nesting begins in early spring for most songbirds.

   Disturbance during nesting can cause birds to abandon their eggs.

   Similarbreeding

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of nest.

   A pair of robins is nesting under the eaves of the porch.

   The sea turtles are nesting on the beach throughout the night.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb nest, intransitive and transitive alike: birds nesting under the eaves, a couple nesting in a new home, bowls nesting one inside another, someone nesting cups neatly in a cupboard. One use lives in a fixed phrase: to go nesting is to hunt for birds' nests or what is in them. As a gerund it shades easily into the noun for a bird's breeding.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   An arrangement in which one item is placed inside another.

   The nesting of these storage containers keeps the kitchen drawers tidy.

   Furniture designers rely on nesting to fold three tables into one compact unit.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The placement of one self-contained piece of code inside another.

   Excessive nesting of conditional statements often signals a need to refactor the code.

   The script became unreadable because of the deep nesting of loops.

   Note

   A programmer's word for structure placed within structure: a loop inside a loop, a conditional inside a conditional. It works both as a mass noun (too much nesting) and as a count noun (each nesting adds a level). The participle supplies the adjective, as in nested IF and nested loop. This is the code-specific case of the general nesting arrangement, and imbrication is its synonym.

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