nicking

Pluralnickings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of nick.

   The movers kept nicking the doorframe as they squeezed the piano through.

   He apologized for nicking the paint on her car door.

   Note

   Present-day use is about minor damage, and the form takes the thing cut or scratched as its object: nicking the paint, nicking a chin. After keep it suggests the same small mishap again and again. The older uses, tallying like matched notches or striking at the precise moment, are obsolete. As a noun the same spelling names a small cut, with the plural nickings.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A small cut or notch, such as one a razor leaves on the skin.

   The physicians sounded a warning about shaving among both men and women who have pigmented moles on the skin. Such moles, they cautioned, should never be irritated by repeated nickings.

   1961, Life, number 20

   Similarcut, notch

   Note

   The word sits naturally with shaving and the skin, and the plural suits cuts that keep happening: Life magazine in 1961 reported physicians warning that pigmented moles should never be irritated by "repeated nickings." It is an ordinary countable noun, one nicking and several nickings, though the shorter nick names a single cut just as well.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   In mining, the cut made by a hewer at the side of the face.

   Before the shift ended, the hewer had cut a clean nicking along one edge of the coal.

   The deputy checked the nickings at each face before the next block was brought down.

   Note

   A miner's word, and it makes sense once the setting is clear: the face is the exposed wall being worked, and the hewer is the miner who cuts it. The nicking is the cut made at the side of that face, loosening its edge so the block can be brought down. Prickings is another name for the same cut.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3