Word.ws English Dictionary

nib

/nɪb/

nib noun: the tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper.

nib: the tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper
Image: ElooKoN ; https:/, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

nib (plural nibs)

  1. The tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper.
    • Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them.1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC
    • Ford, whose often acid nib belied a deep love of all things Iberian, is one of 20 British authors profiled in a new Spanish book[…].2025 April 20, Sam Jones, “‘Their pursuits are the cigar and the siesta’: how two centuries of British writers helped forge our view of Spain”, in The Observer, →ISSN
  2. (dialectal) A bird's beak.
    Synonyms:
    bill, pecker
  3. Bits of trapped dust or other foreign material that form imperfections in painted or varnished surfaces.
  4. A piece of a roasted, hulled cocoa bean.
  5. A small and pointed thing or part; a point; a prong.
    • the little nib or fructifying principle1658, Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus
  6. One of the handles projecting from a scythe snath.
    Synonyms:
    thole
  7. The shaft of a wagon.

Verb

nib (third-person singular simple present nibs, present participle nibbing, simple past and past participle nibbed)

  1. (transitive) To fit (a pen) with a nib.
    • In nibbing the pen, place the inside of the point flat upon the nail of your left-hand thumb (holding the quill between the first and second finger of that hand), and let the whole length of the split be extended thereon, to steady the pen as much as possible […]1820, James Henry Lewis, The best method of pen-making

Noun (2) capitalized: NIB

NIB (plural NIBs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism, slang, fraternity) Initialism of newly initiated brother.
  2. (abbreviation) sodium-ion battery; Abbreviation of Na-ion battery (Na is the chemical symbol for sodium.)
    Synonyms:
    SIB

Adjective capitalized: NIB

NIB (not comparable)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of new in box: Of a product that is the subject of a consumer sale: new and still in its original packaging; not used.

nib meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Malayalam

nib in Hindi

tip of a pen
क़त qat, जीभी jībhī, जीभ jībh, डंक ḍaṅk

nib in Marathi

निब

nib in Telugu

నిబ్, నీబ్

nib in Malayalam

നിബ്, നീബ്
More languagesFewer languages
nib in Kannada
ನಿಬ್, ನೀಬ್
nib in Punjabi
ਐੱਨ. ਆਈ. ਬੀ, ਨਿਬ, ਨੀਬ
nib in Gujarati
નિબ, નીબ
nib in Odia
ନିବ୍
nib in Nepali
निब
nib in Thai
ปลาย bplaai

Synonyms of nib

Forms of nib

Noun
pluralnibs
pluralNIBs
alternative form (obsolete)knib
Verb
third-person singular presentnibs
present participlenibbing
past participlenibbed
pastnibbed

Plural of nib: nibs

Origin of nib

From a variant of neb, perhaps due to association with nibble.

Words formed from nib

Phrases with nib

Words that rhyme with nib

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about nib

What does nib mean?
Nib means the tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper.
What is nib in Hindi?
Nib in Hindi is क़त (qat), जीभी (jībhī), जीभ (jībh). See Nib meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is nib?
Nib can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce nib?
Nib is pronounced /nɪb/.
What is the plural of nib?
The plural of nib is nibs.

Words near nib in the dictionary

  1. Niasian
  2. Niazi
  3. Niazis
  4. Niazmand
  5. Niazmands
  6. nib
  7. nib pen
  8. nib pens
  9. nib sugar
  10. nib sugars
  11. nib-cove

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nib (page history and authors); NIB (page history and authors); nib (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nib (Nepali, 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-nib.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-nib.wav.

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