Etymology From Middle English nest, nist, nyst, from Old English nest, from Proto-West Germanic *nest, from Proto-Germanic *nestą, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós (“nest”), literally "where [the bird] sits down", a compound of *ni (“down”) (whence also English nether) + the zero-grade of the root *sed- (“to sit”) (whence also English sit).
A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
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A place used by a monotreme, fish, amphibian or insect, for depositing eggs and hatching young.
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A snug, comfortable, or cosy residence or job situation.
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A retreat, or place of habitual resort.
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A hideout for bad people to frequent or haunt; a den.
a nest of thieves
That nightclub is a nest of strange people!
2 more examples
Capt. Kirby and I concluding it might be of great Service to the Eaſt-India Company to deſtroy such a Neſt of Rogues, were ready to ſail for that Purpoſe […]1724, Charles Johnson [pseudonym], “Of Capt. Edward England, and His Crew. [A Letter from Captain Makra, dated at Bombay, Nov. 16, 1720.]”, in A General History of the Pyrates, […], 2nd edition, London: Printed for, and sold by T. Warner, […], →OCLC, page 119:
Miss Carpenter told me that a short time previously some Bow Street constables had been sent down to this place to ferret out a crime which had been committed there, and that they reported there was not in all London such a nest of wickedness as they had explored.1895, Frances Power Cobbe, chapter 10, in Life of Frances Power Cobbe, volume 1, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 254:
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A home that a child or young adult shares with a parent or guardian.
I am aspiring to leave the nest.
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Card games, Games A fixed number 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.
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A structure consisting of nested structures, such as nested loops or nested subroutine calls.
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.1981, Donnamaie E. White, Bit-Slice Design: Controllers and ALU's, Garland STPM Press, →ISBN, page 49:
Our analysis to this point has assumed that in a loop nest, we are only parallelizing a single loop.1993 August, Bwolen Yang et al., "Do&Merge: Integrating Parallel Loops and Reductions", in Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (workshop proceedings), Springer (1994), page 178
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A circular bed of pasta, rice, etc. to be topped or filled with other foods.
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Geography, Geology, Natural sciences An aggregated mass of any ore or mineral, in an isolated state, within a rock.
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A collection of boxes, cases, or the like, of graduated size, each put within the one next larger.
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A compact group of pulleys, gears, springs, etc., working together or collectively.
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US, Slang, Vulgar The pubic hair near a vulva or a vulva itself.
Etymology From Middle English nesten, nisten, from Old English nistan, nistian, from Proto-West Germanic *nistijan (“to nest, build a nest”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian näästje (“to nest”), Dutch nesten (“to nest”), German Low German nüsten (“to nest”), German nisten (“to nest”).
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Of animals To build or settle into a nest.
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To settle into a home.
We loved the new house and were nesting there in two days!
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To successively neatly fit inside another.
I bought a set of nesting mixing bowls for my mother.
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To place in, or as if in, a nest.
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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.
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To hunt for birds' nests or their contents (usually "go nesting").
After the first heavy frost, when acorns were falling, I took a friend into partnership and went nesting.1895, Alfred Emanuel Smith, Francis Walton, (Please provide the book title or journal name):