| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| nest |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  n st |
| NOUN: | 1a. A container or shelter made by a bird out of twigs, grass, or other material to hold its eggs and young. b. A similar structure in which fish, insects, or other animals deposit eggs or keep their young. c. A place in which young are reared; a lair. d. A number of insects, birds, or other animals occupying such a place: a nest of hornets. 2. A place affording snug refuge or lodging; a home. 3a. A place or environment that fosters rapid growth or development, especially of something undesirable; a hotbed: a nest of criminal activity. b. Those who occupy or frequent such a place or environment. 4a. A set of objects of graduated size that can be stacked together, each fitting within the one immediately larger: a nest of tables. b. A cluster of similar things. 5. Computer Science A set of data contained sequentially within another. 6. A group of weapons in a prepared position: a machine-gun nest. | | VERB: | Inflected forms: nest·ed, nest·ing, nests
| | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To build or occupy a nest. 2. To create and settle into a warm and secure refuge. 3. To hunt for birds' nests, especially in order to collect the eggs. 4. To fit together in a stack. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To place in or as if in a nest. 2. To put snugly together or inside one another: to nest boxes. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English, from Old English. See sed- in Appendix I. | | WORD HISTORY: | Nest is an ancient word, *nizdos in Indo-European, composed of the prefix *ni– “down,” plus a form of the verbal root *sed–, “to sit,” followed by a suffix used to form nouns, *–os. Thus a *ni-zd-os literally means “(place where the bird) sits down.” In Germanic, an old zd became st. Thus *nizdos became *nistaz, which further changed in Old English to nest. Latin also inherited the word *nizdos from Indo-European, where it eventually changed to n dus. This word has been borrowed into English as a scientific term. The prefix *ni– survives elsewhere in English, too, in the words beneath and nether.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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