nest

Meanings

Noun

• A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
• A place used by another mammal, fish, amphibian or insect, for depositing eggs and hatching young.
• A snug, comfortable, or cosy residence or job situation.
• A retreat, or place of habitual resort.
• A hideout for bad people to frequent or haunt; a den.
• A home that a child or young adult shares with a parent or guardian.
• 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.
• A fortified position for a weapon.
• A structure consisting of nested structures, such as nested loops or nested subroutine calls.
• A circular bed of pasta, rice, etc. to be topped or filled with other foods.
• An aggregated mass of any ore or mineral, in an isolated state, within a rock.
• A collection of boxes, cases, or the like, of graduated size, each put within the one next larger.
• A compact group of pulleys, gears, springs, etc., working together or collectively.

Verb

• To build or settle into a nest.
• To settle into a home.
• To successively neatly fit inside another.
• To place in, or as if in, a nest.
• To place one thing neatly inside another, and both inside yet another (and so on).
• To hunt for birds' nests or their contents (usually "go nesting").

Origin

• From Middle English nest, nist, nyst, from Old English nest, from Proto-West Germanic *nest, from Proto-Germanic *nestą, from Proto-Indo-European *nisdós, literally "where [the bird] sits down", a compound of *h₁én (whence also English nether) + the zero-grade of the root *sed- (whence also English sit).
• Image:Taveta Golden-weaver nest.JPG|thumb|A Taveta Golden-weaver's elaborate nest
• From Middle English nesten, nisten, from Old English nistan, nistian, from Proto-West Germanic *nistijan. Cognate with Saterland Frisian näästje, Dutch nesten, German Low German nüsten, German nisten.