nickel

Pluralnickels

Formsnickels

1. 1
   nounCanadaUScountable

   A United States coin worth five cents.

   He dropped a nickel into the parking meter.

   The cashier counted out three nickels in change.

   Note

   In the US and Canada the five-cent piece is simply a nickel, and its face value made the word slang shorthand for five. That is why it can also mean five dollars, a five-year sentence, a five in cards, or Interstate 5. Jitney is a synonym for the coin itself, and comedians still use the coin as a byword for something small and ordinary.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A silvery metallic element with atomic number 28 and the symbol Ni.

   The plant extracts nickel from ore mined in the surrounding hills.

   Stainless steel owes much of its corrosion resistance to nickel.

   Note

   The metal is named for a goblin. The Swedish mineralogist Axel F. Cronstedt shortened German Kupfernickel, a mineral holding copper and nickel. Its second half meant "insignificant person, goblin" and began as a nickname of Nikolaus, because the ore's silvery color was deceptive. As the element it is uncountable: you work with some nickel, never a nickel, which is the coin.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To coat or plate an object with a thin layer of nickel.

   Manufacturers often nickel steel fittings to improve their shine and durability.

   The jeweler nickeled the brass frame before setting the stones.

   Similarplate

   Note

   A verb made directly from the metal itself, and its spelling divides by country. American usage keeps a single l in the inflected forms, nickeled and nickeling. British usage doubles the l before -ed and -ing. The third-person form, nickels, is spelled the same as the noun's plural, so only the sentence shows whether it is an action or a thing.

4. 4
   nounslangUScountable or uncountable

   An amount of money equal to five dollars.

   Lend me a nickel and I'll buy us both lunch.

   She tipped the valet a nickel and told him to keep it.

   Similarfiver

   Note

   Slang keeps the coin's "five" and drops the cents. Only context tells this sense from the coin itself. "Lend me a nickel" asks for a five-dollar bill only if lunch costs that much. It works as both a count noun and a mass noun, and it belongs to casual American talk. In anything written for strangers, "five dollars" is the safe choice.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A defensive formation in American football that fields five defensive backs (one of them a nickelback) rather than the usual four.

   The defense lined up in a nickel to counter the spread offense.

   Against four-receiver sets, they often shift from a nickel to a dime.

   Note

   Football borrows the coin's "five" for the number of defensive backs. The fifth back gives both the player and the formation their names: the nickelback is the extra man who turns a standard four-back alignment into a nickel. Teams line up in a nickel or play nickel, so the word works as a count noun and a mass noun alike.

6. 6
   nounslangUScountable or uncountable

   A term of imprisonment lasting five years.

   The judge handed him a nickel for the burglary.

   After doing a nickel upstate, he came home determined to change.

   Note

   Prison talk measures time in coins. The word usually comes with verbs of serving or sentencing: someone does a nickel, or a judge hands someone a nickel. It is American slang with a hard edge. In reporting or legal writing, "a five-year sentence" is the neutral phrasing.

7. 7
   nounslangcountable or uncountable

   A playing card of the rank five.

   The dealer flipped a nickel onto the table.

   Holding two nickels gave her a useful low pair.

   Similarfive

   Note

   Card-table slang for a five of any suit, it counts like any other card name: two nickels make a pair of fives. As slang it lives in the talk of players around the table. Rules, rulebooks and written commentary on a game would simply say "five."

8. 8
   nounslangUScountable or uncountable

   An amount of money equal to five hundred dollars.

   The dealer wanted a nickel for the watch.

   She wired him a nickel to cover the deposit on the apartment.

   Note

   The same slang stretches a hundredfold. Here a nickel means five hundred, and the scale is set by the deal rather than by the word: in a price for a watch or an apartment deposit, five dollars would make no sense. When the sum matters, as in a quote or a contract, spell out the amount, because a listener can hear five dollars instead.

9. 9
   nounslangUScountable or uncountable

   The interstate highway numbered 5, running north and south along the U.S. West Coast.

   She merged onto the nickel just north of Los Angeles.

   A pileup shut down the nickel for several hours.

   Note

   Highway slang usually takes the article. Drivers on the West Coast say "the nickel," or sometimes "the hot nickel," much as they might say "the 5." The article does real work here: without it, "a nickel" would be heard as the coin. The nickname belongs to this one road and to casual talk, not to maps or road signs.

10. 10
    nounUKcountable or uncountable

    An airborne propaganda leaflet, dropped from aircraft over enemy territory.

    A single nickel fluttered down into the village square.

    Crews loaded bundles of nickels alongside the bombs before the night raid.

    Similarleaflet

    Note

    A wartime code name that outlived its secrecy: Richard H. Kraemer's The Secret War in the Balkans (2010) calls nickels "the code-name for propaganda leaflets." They came in strategic and tactical kinds, and The Saturday Evening Post in 1945 counted 15,000,000 a week falling on Sicily and Italy. The word is usually plural and belongs to writing about that war.

11. 11
    verbUKtransitive

    To scatter propaganda leaflets from aircraft over enemy territory.

    On clear nights the bombers would nickel the front lines with surrender notices.

    Squadrons nickeled enemy cities throughout the campaign.

    Similarleaflet

    Note

    The verb made from the leaflets themselves takes its target as object, the way bomb does: cities were nickeled on each mission. Nickeling also became the name of the work itself. Monro MacCloskey's Secret Air Missions (1966) speaks of "nickeling missions" over southern France. Kraemer credits nickeling with giving occupied peoples their only reliable news of the war.

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