nimble
Syllables: nim·ble/ˈnɪmbəl/
nimble adjective: adept at taking or grasping.
Adjective
nimble (comparative nimbler, superlative nimblest)
- Adept at taking or grasping.
- nimble fingers
- Quick and light in movement or action.
- He was too nimble for the assailant and easily escaped his grasp.
- […] if the men should not agree what to play, but one would have a grave Pavane, another a nimbler Galliard, a third some frisking toy or Iigg, and then all of them should be wilful, none yield to his fellow, but every one scrape on his own tune as loud as he could: what a hideous hateful noise may...1656, Robert Sanderson, Twenty Sermons, London: Henry Seile, Sermon 13, p. 267
- Quickwitted and alert.
- He has a nimble mind and can improvise in any situation.
- "It requires you to be flexible and nimble in your thinking and Huw has already demonstrated that," said Greenwood, [...]2020 May 20, “Merriman praised over handling of TSC's 'virtual' transition”, in Rail, page 12
Verb
nimble (third-person singular simple present nimbles, present participle nimbling, simple past and past participle nimbled)
- To move nimbly.
- Their teeth are regularly and assiduously cleaned by shrimp that nimble in and out of the moray's mouth like ballet dancers in the jaws of a mechanical stage dragon.2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, page 72
nimble meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali
nimble in Tamil
- சுறுசுறுப்பான, வேகமான
nimble in Marathi
- quick and light in movement or action
- चपळ capaḷ
- quick-witted and alert
- चपळ capaḷ
nimble in Urdu
- چابک دست, چالاک, چست, خفیف, پھرتیلا, سبک
nimble in Bengali
- চটপটে, চঞ্চল, ক্ষিপ্র
More languagesFewer languages
- nimble in Malayalam
- ചുറുചുറുക്കുള്ള, വൈദഗ്ദ്ധ്യമുള്ള
- nimble in Kannada
- ಚುರುಕುಗತಿಯ, ಚುರುಕಾದ ಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಯ, ವೇಗದ, ಸೂಕ್ಷ್ಮಗ್ರಾಹಿಯಾದ
- nimble in Sanskrit
- लघु laghu
- nimble in Malay
- tangkas
- nimble in Persian
- زیرک zirak, باهوش, تیز tiz, چابک čâbok
- nimble in Thai
- คล่อง klɔ̂ng
Examples of nimble in a sentence
- Attempts to introduce versions of "market communism" — in China, Hungary or Yugoslavia — have shown how hard it is to make mainly state-owned economies as nimble as mainly private ones.1988, The Economist, volume 306, numbers 7532-7539, page 13:
- The quickest and nimblest were probably the oxycones, throwing themselves through the water like discuses.2017, Danna Staaf, Squid Empire, ForeEdge, →ISBN, page 87:
Antonyms of nimble
Forms of nimble
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | nimbler |
| superlative | nimblest |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | nimbles |
| present participle | nimbling |
| past participle | nimbled |
| past | nimbled |
Origin of nimble
With intrusive -b-, inherited from Middle English nymyl, nemel, nemyll, nymell (“agile, quick, ready, able, capable”), a merger of Old English nǣmel (“receptive, quick to grasp”) and Old English numol (“able to take, capable of holding”), both from niman (“to take”) + -el, -ol (associative suffix), corresponding to nim + -le. Compare German nehmen, Gothic 𐌽𐌹𐌼𐌰𐌽 (niman), Old Norse nema (“to take”). More at nim.
Words formed from nimble
Phrases with nimble
Words that rhyme with nimble
Questions about nimble
- What does nimble mean?
- Nimble means adept at taking or grasping.
- What is nimble in Tamil?
- Nimble in Tamil is சுறுசுறுப்பான, வேகமான. See Nimble meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use nimble in a sentence?
- Attempts to introduce versions of "market communism" — in China, Hungary or Yugoslavia — have shown how hard it is to make mainly state-owned economies as nimble as mainly private ones.
- What part of speech is nimble?
- Nimble can be an adjective or a verb.
- How do you pronounce nimble?
- Nimble is pronounced /ˈnɪmbəl/.
Words near nimble in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nimble (page history and authors); nimble (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nimble (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Nimble (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nimble (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nimble (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-nimble.wav.
Cite this entry: “nimble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nimble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.