Word.ws English Dictionary

nifle

nifle noun: a trifle; something small and insignificant.

Noun

nifle (plural nifles)

  1. (obsolete) A trifle; something small and insignificant.
    • THE great Galees of Venice and Florence
      Be well laden with things of complacence,
      All spicery and of grossers ware:
      With sweete wines all maner of chaffare,
      Apes, and Japes, and marmusets tayled,
      Nifles and trifles that little have avayled:
      And things with which they fetely blere our eye:
      With...1599, Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Nauigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation, […], 2nd edition, London: […] George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, →OCLC...
    • […]but if they be greeued, let their toad-swolne galls burst in sunder for me, with puffing choler: let them turne the buckle of their dudgeon anger behinde, lest the toung of it catch their owne dottril skins, I waigh them not a nifle.1607, Thomas Walkington, The optick glasse of humors. Or The touchstone of a golden temperature, […] , page 83

Forms of nifle

pluralnifles

Origin of nifle

From Middle English nifle, possibly from Anglo-Norman. Compare Scots niffle (“to trifle”).

Questions about nifle

What does nifle mean?
Nifle means a trifle; something small and insignificant.
What part of speech is nifle?
Nifle is a noun.
What is the plural of nifle?
The plural of nifle is nifles.

Words near nifle in the dictionary

  1. nifH
  2. nifHs
  3. nifidepine
  4. nifkin
  5. nifkins
  6. nifle
  7. nifles
  8. Niflheim
  9. niflumic
  10. niflumic acid
  11. NIFOC

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nifle (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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