Word.ws English Dictionary

nested

nested is the simple past and past participle of nest.

Adjective

nested (not comparable)

  1. Embedded.
  2. Successively fitted one inside another.
  3. (Of a lexical item) contained within a dictionary entry as a subordinate term of the main headword.
    • The "Terms" number is the total number of words and lexical phrases, including sub-headwords and other nested lexical items, but exclusive of variants.2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 297

Meaning of nest

Verb

nest (third-person singular simple present nests, present participle nesting, simple past and past participle nested)

  1. (intransitive) To build or settle into a nest.
  2. (intransitive) To settle into a home.
    • We loved the new house and were nesting there in two days!
  3. (intransitive) To successively neatly fit inside another.
    • I bought a set of nesting mixing bowls for my mother.
  4. (transitive) To place in, or as if in, a nest.
  5. (transitive) 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.
  6. (intransitive) 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)

See all 21 meanings of nest

Words formed from nested

Phrases with nested

Questions about nested

What does nested mean?
Nested means embedded.
What is nested the simple past and past participle of?
Nested is the simple past and past participle of nest.
What part of speech is nested?
Nested is an adjective.

Words near nested in the dictionary

  1. nestbox
  2. nestboxes
  3. nestbuilding
  4. nestcam
  5. nestcams
  6. nested
  7. nested class
  8. nested classes
  9. nested together
  10. nestedness
  11. nester

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nested (page history and authors); nest (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.

Last updated:

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