NIPPING • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Nipping

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/nˈɪpɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Nip v. t. (past & past part. nipped, less properly nipt; pres. part. nipping)

To catch and inclose or compress tightly between two surfaces, or points which are brought together or closed; to pinch; to close in upon. "May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell, Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress."

To remove by pinching, biting, or cutting with two meeting edges of anything; to clip. "The small shoots... must be nipped off."

Hence: To blast, as by frost; to check the growth or vigor of; to destroy.

To vex or pain, as by nipping; hence, to taunt. "And sharp remorse his heart did prick and nip."

To nip in the bud, to cut off at the very commencement of growth; to kill in the incipient stage.

adjective

Nipping adj. Biting; pinching; painful; destructive; as, a nipping frost; a nipping wind.

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Etymology of 'Nipping'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Nipping" Quotes from Famous Books

... you wish, to pass into heaven when you die, I suppose. Some of its characteristics attract you. You believe in punishment for sin, and you would willingly escape that. You believe in a place of rest after toil, of happiness after sorrow, where nipping frosts of disappointment, and wild blasts of calamity, and slow, gnawing decay no more harm and kill your joys—and you would like that. But do you wish to be pure and stainless, to have your hearts fixed ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the air grew nipping cold. The clouds shed off their fleeces; a snow-hillock, each ...

— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... delicate attention. Keep them talking for a few minutes while I pay a visit to the kitchen," cried Nan, deftly nipping up the roll of umbrellas, and disappearing from the hall, to return with the meekest of meek faces, and bid a fond adieu to the parents for whose confusion she ...

— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... had the chapel moved to a lot on a side street in town within the week. However, when a hunter comes suddenly upon a Harpeth jaguar he is glad to use his best repeater and he is careful how he shoots, though if he is very skillful he may tease the lion aloft with a few nipping shots. I felt suddenly very strong for the fight that I knew was on, though the lion didn't possess that knowledge as yet. Deliberately I fired a preliminary bullet that seemed to graze father, though it left ...

— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... passage he wrenched floundering bodies aside and kicked and struck at floundering legs and arms. Coming to the surface and sinking his feet to the deck at the same moment, he grasped a step of the companionway and hauled himself out of the water, as if the devil were nipping at his heels. Turning on an upper step, he reached down, clutched two of the struggling fellows by the collars and dragged them up from the battling smother. One of them sprang on up the companion without so much as a glance at his rescuer, reached the deck with a yell, and started forward on ...

— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

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