nicked

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of nick.

   He nicked his chin twice while shaving this morning.

   The old cutting board has been nicked and scarred by years of hard use.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs: the simple past (he nicked his chin) and the participle after have or be (the board has been nicked). In current use it means a small, shallow cut or scratch; the older uses (tallying like matched notches, striking at just the right moment, edging a ball off the bat) are obsolete, and nicking a horse's tail so it is carried higher is rare.

2. 2
   adjective

   Marked with one or more small cuts or notches.

   The chef retired the nicked knife and ordered a new set.

   After decades of service, the oak bar was nicked and stained along its front edge.

   Similarchipped, notched, scratched

3. 3
   adjectiveslangCommonwealthIrelandUK

   Taken from its owner by theft.

   He got six months for selling nicked car parts out of his garage.

   I wouldn't touch that telly if I were you; it's almost certainly nicked.

   Similarstolen, pinched, hot

   Note

   It is slang in Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth: at home in conversation, out of place in formal writing, where stolen does the job. What it describes settles the meaning. A nicked bike was taken by a thief; a burglar who is nicked has been caught, which is the "arrested" meaning.

4. 4
   adjectiveslangCommonwealthIrelandUK

   Caught and arrested by the police.

   "Right, sunshine, you're nicked," the sergeant said, snapping on the cuffs.

   He'd dodged the police for months before he finally got nicked at the airport.

   Similararrested, busted, collared

   Note

   This sense usually arrives in one short line, said to the suspect at the moment of arrest: "You're nicked." John Thaw's Jack Regan says it in Ian Kennedy Martin's Regan (1974), and Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London (2011) gives the same words to its narrator nearly four decades later. Like the "stolen" meaning, it is slang, suited to speech and fiction rather than an official report.

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