Word.ws English Dictionary

niddick

/ˈnɪdɪk/

niddick noun: the nape of the neck.

Noun

niddick (plural niddicks)

  1. (West-Country, dialectal) The nape of the neck.
    • Chad a Crick in ma Back and in ma Niddick.1746, Exmoor Courtship, published 1879, page 102
    • an way that a geed en sich a wap in the niddick that strambang a het es head agin the clovel, an made a bump in es brow.1837, Mary Reynolds Palmer, A Dialogue in the Devonshire Dialect, page 19

Examples of niddick in a sentence

  • […]an' Tim just took un by the niddick, same as you might a kitten, an' hove the blasphemous twoad into the mud along wi' the ducks an' watercress.1903, Eden Phillpotts, The Striking Hours, page 118:
  • A thought small, but it will keep your niddick dry."1928, Eden Phillpotts, Children of Men, page 389:
  • Historically, other words have been used to refer to this place on the body: hattrel, niddick, noddle, noll, nuke, and poll; all have passed out of use.[2015, Charles Hodgson, Carnal Knowledge: A Navel Gazer's Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia, →ISBN, page 115:

Forms of niddick

pluralniddicks

Origin of niddick

Uncertain. The English Dialect Dictionary mentions several other spellings found in other dialects (nedack, neddick, nudack, nuddick, nudeck) and compares it to nod (“nape of the neck”), found in e.g. John Coker Egerton's Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways (1884). Compare the ending to -ock.

Questions about niddick

What does niddick mean?
Niddick means the nape of the neck.
How do you use niddick in a sentence?
[…]an' Tim just took un by the niddick, same as you might a kitten, an' hove the blasphemous twoad into the mud along wi' the ducks an' watercress.
What part of speech is niddick?
Niddick is a noun.
How do you pronounce niddick?
Niddick is pronounced /ˈnɪdɪk/.
What is the plural of niddick?
The plural of niddick is niddicks.

Words near niddick in the dictionary

  1. niddering
  2. nidderings
  3. nidderling
  4. nidderlings
  5. nidders
  6. niddick
  7. niddicks
  8. niddicock
  9. niddicocks
  10. niddle-noddle
  11. niddle-noddled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: niddick (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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