• Nest

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /nÉ›st/
    • Rhymes: -É›st

    Origin

    From Old English nest, from Proto-Germanic *nestaz, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós ("nest"), a compound of *ni ("down") and the zero-grade of the root *sed- ("to sit") (whence also English sit).

    Full definition of nest

    Noun

    nest

    (plural nests)
    1. A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
    2. A place used by another mammal, fish, amphibian or insect, for depositing eggs and hatching young.
    3. A snug, comfortable, or cozy residence or job situation.
    4. A retreat, or place of habitual resort.
    5. A hideout for bad people to frequent or haunt; a den.a nest of thieves''That nightclub is a nest of strange people!
    6. A home that a child or young adult shares with a parent, guardian, or a person acting in the capacity of a parent or guardian. A parental home.''I am aspiring to leave the nest.
    7. (cards) A fixed amount of cards in some bidding games awarded to the highest bidder allowing him to exchange any or all with cards in his hand.''I was forced to change trumps when I found the ace, jack, and nine of diamonds in the nest.
    8. (military) A fortified position for a weapon, e.g. a machine gun nest.
    9. (computing) A structure consisting of nested structures, such as nested loops or nested subroutine calls.
      • 1981, Donnamaie E. White, Bit-Slice Design: Controllers and ALU's, Garland STPM Press, ISBN 9780824071035, page 49:Subroutine 4 cannot jump out of the subroutine nest in one step. Each return address must be popped from the stack in the order in which it was pushed onto the stack.
      • 1993 August, Bwolen Yang et al., "Do&Merge: Integrating Parallel Loops and Reductions", in Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (workshop proceedings), Springer (1994), ISBN 978-3-540-57659-4, page 178:Our analysis to this point has assumed that in a loop nest, we are only parallelizing a single loop.
    10. A circular bed of pasta, rice, etc. to be topped or filled with other foods.
    11. (geology) An aggregated mass of any ore or mineral, in an isolated state, within a rock.
    12. A collection of boxes, cases, or the like, of graduated size, each put within the one next larger.
    13. A compact group of pulleys, gears, springs, etc., working together or collectively.

    Derived terms

    Verb

    1. (intransitive, of animals) To build or settle into a nest.
    2. (intransitive) To settle into a home.We loved the new house and were nesting there in two days!
    3. (intransitive) To successively neatly fit inside another.I bought a set of nesting mixing bowls for my mother.
    4. (transitive) To place in, or as if in, a nest.
    5. (transitive) To place one thing neatly inside another, and both inside yet another (and so on).There would be much more room in the attic if you had nested all the empty boxes.
    6. (intransitive) To hunt for birds' nests or their contents (usually "go nesting").
      • 1895, Alfred Emanuel Smith, Francis WaltonAfter the first heavy frost, when acorns were falling, I took a friend into partnership and went nesting.

    Anagrams

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