Word.ws English Dictionary

nep

/nɛp/

nep noun: catmint, catnip; Nepeta cataria.

Noun (1)

nep (usually uncountable, plural neps)

  1. (usually) Catmint, catnip; Nepeta cataria.
    • Nep is generally used for women to procure their courses, being taken inwardly or outwardly, either alone or with other convenient herbs in a decoction to bathe them, of sit over the hot fumes thereof.1653, Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physician Enlarged, Folio, published 2007, page 201

Noun (2)

nep (plural neps)

  1. A knot in a fibre.
    • The neps appear as small dense areas or spots when compared to the surrounding fibers.1987, Paula Simmons, Spinning and weaving with wool, published 1977, →ISBN, page 130

Verb

nep (third-person singular simple present neps, present participle nepping, simple past and past participle nepped)

  1. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) Of cotton: to form knots.

Noun (3)

nep (plural neps)

  1. (US, derogatory, slang) One who engages in nepotism, usually to the one who benefits from it.

Proper noun capitalized: NEP

NEP

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of New Economic Policy.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of National Energy Program.
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of National Election Pool.
  4. (UK, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of North East Party.

Noun (4) capitalized: NEP

NEP

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of noise-equivalent power.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of nanosatellite engineering professional.
  3. (US, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of non-English proficient.

Noun (5) capitalized: Nep

Nep (plural Neps)

  1. (derogatory, ethnic, informal, offensive, slur) Nepali
    • Nepali job. Hundred and one per cent a Nep job. You've seen some of the crime they're responsible for. I tell you, these guys are fucking crazy. […] Ninety-nine per cent of this kind of crime, at least in Delhi, is done by Neps.2013, Aatish Taseer, The Temple Goers

Forms of nep

Noun
pluralneps
pluralNeps
alternative form (dialectal)nip
Verb
third-person singular presentneps
present participlenepping
past participlenepped
pastnepped

Plural of nep: neps

Origin of nep

From Middle English neppe, nepe, nepte, nept, from Old English nepte, nefte, from Latin nepeta. Compare Dutch neppe, nippe (“catnip”). Doublet of nepeta.

Perhaps a variant of nap for knap, from Middle English knep, kneppe, knappe, a conflation of Old English cnep, cnæp, cnæpp (“top, knop, summit”) and Old Norse knappr (“knob”), both from Proto-Germanic *knappaz, *knappô (“knob”), from Proto-Indo-European *gnebʰ- (“to press, tighten”), from Proto-Indo-European *gen- (“to pinch, squeeze, bend, press together, ball”). Compare also Old Norse hnappr (“button”). Related to knob.

Clipping of nepotist.

Words formed from nep

Words that rhyme with nep

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about nep

What does nep mean?
Nep means catmint, catnip; Nepeta cataria.
What part of speech is nep?
Nep can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce nep?
Nep is pronounced /nɛp/.
What is the plural of nep?
The plural of nep is neps.

Words near nep in the dictionary

  1. neozoologist
  2. neozoologists
  3. neozoology
  4. neoïd
  5. neoïds
  6. nep
  7. NEPA
  8. Nepaalalipi
  9. nepadutant
  10. nepafenac
  11. Nepal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nep (page history and authors); NEP (page history and authors); Nep (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.