nest
/nɛst/
nest noun: a structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
Noun (1)
nest (plural nests)
- A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
- A place used by a 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 nest of thieves
- That nightclub is a nest of strange people!
- A home that a child or young adult shares with a parent or guardian.
- I am aspiring to leave the nest.
- 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.
- A fortified position for a weapon.
- a machine gun nest
- 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
- 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.
- The pubic hair near a vulva or a vulva itself.
Verb
nest (third-person singular simple present nests, present participle nesting, simple past and past participle nested)
- To build or settle into a nest.
- To settle into a home.
- We loved the new house and were nesting there in two days!
- To successively neatly fit inside another.
- I bought a set of nesting mixing bowls for my mother.
- To place in, or as if in, a nest.
- 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.
- 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)
Noun (2) capitalized: NEST
NEST (plural NESTs)
Proper noun capitalized: Nest
Nest (plural Nests)
- A surname from German or Welsh.
nest meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
nest in Hindi
- bird-built structure
- घोसला ghoslā, घोंसला ghonslā
nest in Tamil
- bird-built structure
- கூடு kūṭu
nest in Marathi
- bird-built structure
- घरटे gharṭe
nest in Urdu
- bird-built structure
- آشِیانَہ āśiyāna, گھون٘سْلَہ ghõsla, گھون٘سْلا ghõslā
More languagesFewer languages
- nest in Bengali
- নীড় niṛ, আবাস abaś
- nest in Telugu
- గూడు gūḍu
- nest in Malayalam
- കൂട് kūṭŭ
- nest in Kannada
- ಗೂಡು gūḍu
- nest in Punjabi
- ਆਲ੍ਹਣਾ
- nest in Gujarati
- માળો, માળું
- nest in Sanskrit
- स्वसर svasara
- nest in Sinhala
- කදලුව kadaluwa
- nest in Assamese
- বাহ bah
- nest in Nepali
- गुँड gũḍ, घोल ghol
- nest in Pashto
- ځاله jãla
- nest in Tagalog
- limliman, mamugad
- nest in Arabic
- عُشّ ʕušš, أَعْشَاش ʔaʕšāš, وَكْر wakr, عش ʕešš
- nest in Malay
- sarang
- nest in Indonesian
- sarang
- nest in Persian
- لانِه lâne, آشْیانِه âšyâne
- nest in Thai
- รัง rang, รังนก rang-nók, ซ่อง sɔ̂ng, ทำรัง tam-rang
- nest in Vietnamese
- tổ, ổ
- nest in Myanmar
- သိုက် suik, အသိုက် a.suik, မြုံ mrum
- Kashmiri
- اول vl
Examples of nest in a sentence
- Birds fly their prey to their nest to feed it to their young.
- The squirrel cheeked some nuts before heading back to its nest.
- The face of the cliff had many projections that were big enough for birds to nest on.
Synonyms of nest
Forms of nest
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | nests |
| plural | NESTs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | nests |
| present participle | nesting |
| past participle | nested |
| past | nested |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Nests |
| alternative form | Nist |
Origin of nest
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).
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”).
Two possible origins: * Welsh metronymic surname, from a diminutive of the personal name Agnes. * Borrowed from German Nest (“nest”), probably a topographic surname.
Words formed from nest
- ant nest beetle
- bird in a nest
- bird-nest
- bird's nest
- birdsnest
- bird's nest cut
- bird's-nest fern
- bird's nest fungus
- bird's-nest orchid
- bird's nest pudding
- bird's nest soup
- bird's nest swing
- boar's nest
- brood nest
- clapnest
- crowsnest
- crow's-nest
- crow's nest
- cuckoo's nest
- denest
- disnest
- don't shit in your own nest
- edible bird's nest
- egg in a nest
- empty nest
- empty-nest syndrome
- empty nest syndrome
- feather one's nest
- feather one's own nest
- fly the nest
- foul one's own nest
- full nest syndrome
- gravel nest
- hangnest
- Hawks Nest
- hive nest
- hoorah's nest
- hornets' nest
- hornet's nest
- hurrah's nest
- it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest
- language nest
- leave the nest
- love nest
- mare's nest
- mare's-nest
- mudnester
- nestage
- nest box
- nestbuilding
- nestcam
- nest egg
- nestful
- nesthole
- nestle
- nestless
- nestlet
- nestlike
- nestmaking
- nestmate
Phrases with nest
- UFO nest
- bird nest
- nest eggs
- trap nest
- Crows Nest
- nest boxes
- rat's nest
- Wasps Nest
- nest scrape
- nest scrapes
- Zapotec nest
- flew the nest
32 more phrasesFewer phrases
- left the nest
- nest together
- flies the nest
- flown the nest
- nest of vipers
- Pheasants Nest
- flying the nest
- leaves the nest
- ant nest beetles
- bird's nest cuts
- leaving the nest
- wasp nest beetle
- bird's nest fungi
- bird's nest soups
- wasp nest beetles
- bird's nest swings
- feathers one's nest
- tangled nest spider
- bird's nest puddings
- feathered one's nest
- fouls one's own nest
- tangled nest spiders
- feathering one's nest
- fouled one's own nest
- fouling one's own nest
- feathers one's own nest
- stir up a hornets' nest
- feathered one's own nest
- stirs up a hornets' nest
- feathering one's own nest
- stirred up a hornets' nest
- stirring up a hornets' nest
Words that rhyme with nest
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- guest
- quest
- bequest
- distressed
- pest
- prest
- request
- revest
- west
- wrest
- zest
- contest
- depressed
- dressed
- gest
- impressed
- jest
- suggest
- acid test
- best
- celeste
- divest
- ingest
- molest
- North West
- northwest
- possessed
- pressed
- professed
- southwest
- -cest
- addressed
- behest
- compressed
- congest
- detest
- fest
- infest
- lest
- obsessed
- pretest
- processed
- repressed
- rest.
- stressed
- tressed
- unrest
- unstressed
Questions about nest
- What does nest mean?
- Nest means a structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
- What is nest in Hindi?
- Nest in Hindi is घोसला (ghoslā), घोंसला (ghonslā). See Nest meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is nest?
- Nest can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce nest?
- Nest is pronounced /nɛst/.
- What is the plural of nest?
- The plural of nest is nests.
Words near nest in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nest (page history and authors); NEST (page history and authors); Nest (page history and authors); nest (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nest (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-nest.ogg.
Cite this entry: “nest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.