Word.ws English Dictionary

nibs

nibs is the plural of nib.

Noun (1)

nibs (plural nibs)

  1. (UK, slang) An important or self-important person.
    • Vera, you are a gleam of brilliant modernity in our dim old cave of antiques — and their nibs, our ancestors." Peter waved disrespectfully to the portrait1919, Robert Nichols, “The Secret”, in The Century, page 734
    • Betsey Reed, Her Nibs, was just as witty and quaint as usual, sitting in state in her wheel chair and dominating everything and everybody.1920, Oreola Williams Haskell with Ida Husted Harper, Banner bearers: tales of the suffrage campaigns, page 345
  2. (UK, dated, obsolete, slang) Self.
  3. (cribbage) A jack turned up by the dealer.
    • Two for his nibs.
    Synonyms:
    nob

Meaning of nib

Noun

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
  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

See all 8 meanings of nib

Noun (2) capitalized: NIBs

NIBs

  1. (plural) plural of NIB

Synonyms of nibs

Forms of nibs

pluralnibs
alternative formnabs

Origin of nibs

See nib.

Words formed from nibs

Questions about nibs

What does nibs mean?
Nibs means an important or self-important person.
What is nibs the plural of?
Nibs is the plural of nib.
What part of speech is nibs?
Nibs is a noun.
What is the plural of nibs?
The plural of nibs is nibs.

Words near nibs in the dictionary

  1. niboshi
  2. NiBrAl
  3. NiBrAls
  4. nibroxane
  5. NIBRS
  6. nibs
  7. nibsome
  8. Nibuchu
  9. nibung
  10. nibungs
  11. nic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nibs (page history and authors); NIBs (page history and authors); nib (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-nibs.ogg.

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