How to use nibble in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Nibble means to take a small, quick bite, or several of such bites, of (something). Example: “The rabbit nibbled the lettuce.”

Examples of nibble by meaning

verbTo take a small, quick bite, or several of such bites, of (something).

The rabbit nibbled the lettuce.
Giant parrots nibbled seed from the children's fingertips and my sister peeled a couple of satsumas for the lemurs.2014 November 2, Alex James, “The day I came face-to-face with a tiger”, in The Daily Telegraph, London: Telegraph Media Group, →ISSN...
The loosening of the normative allows her to be venturesome: having arrived at her usual height, she nibbles the right side of the mushroom again and so drives herself down to nine inches high.2016, Gillian Beer, “Growing and Eating”, in Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll, Chicago, Ill.; London...

verbTo make (one's way) through or while taking small bites.

Before he realized it, he had nibbled his way through a whole bag of potato chips.
The cows nibbled their way across the field.

verbChiefly followed by into or to: to cause (something) to be in a certain state through small bites.

The grass had been nibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like the surrounding country, but gray and velvety.1918 September, Willa Sibert Cather, chapter VII, in My Ántonia, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], →OCLC, book I...

verbChiefly followed by at, away, or on: to take a small, quick bite, or several of such bites; to eat (at frequent...

The rabbit nibbled at the lettuce.

verbTo lightly bite, especially in a loving or playful manner.

He nibbled at my neck and made me shiver.

verbFollowed by away at: to reduce or use up gradually; to eat.

A report out this week from the National Consumer Law Center lays out a host of ways in which banks nibble away at jobless benefits with fees the center called "junk."2011 May 11, Ann Carrns, “Prepaid cards subject jobless to host of fees”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times...

nounA unit of memory equal to half a byte, or chiefly four bits.

At every negative-going transition it reads a 4-bit ADPCM nybble (there are 2 nybbles per byte) and stores it in a memory-resident table.1983 June, Steve Ciarcia, “Ciarcia’s Circuit Cellar: Use ADPCM for Highly Intelligible Speech Synthesis”, in Lawrence J. Curran, editor...
All we have to do is to split the binary value into 4-bit nybbles and to map each nybble onto its corresponding hexadecimal digit.2005, Clive “MAX” Maxfield, Alvin Brown, The Definitive Guide to How Computers Do Math […], Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Interscience, John Wiley &...
A nibble is a collection of four bits.2006, A. K. Singh, Manish Tiwari, Arun Prakash, Digital Principles Switching Theory, New Delhi: New Age International, →ISBN, pages 15–16

More sentences with nibble

Nibbles is showing at the California Cat Show.From the entry show
Meet a mischief of mice that is not nibbling away at the foundation of an old building.2025 December 25, Neva Rae Fox, “This Mischief of Mice Preserves a Cathedral”, in The Living Church, archived from the original on 28 Jul…. From the entry mischief
The rabbits barely acknowledged her, intent on cleaning themselves, nibbling their food, tidily excreting.2018, Melanie Finn, The Underneath. From the entry tidily
Nonchokable nibbles, for example, rice cakes, may settle the hungry traveler.2013, Martha Sears, James Sears, William Sears, The Baby Book, Revised Edition. From the entry nonchokable
Blue wrens and spoggies had been nibbling on the food they had left outside.2011, K. J. Cherry, A Piece of My Heart, →ISBN, page 68. From the entry spoggy
The pumello was full of bitter seeds, and these too they ate, nibbling them like peanuts.2011, Judy Schultz, Freddy's War, Brindle & Glass. From the entry pumello
It's highly unlikely you'll land a big fish before you've had nibbles from a few minnows.2010 March 13, Mariella Frostrup, “Dear Mariella”, in The Observer, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the…. From the entry Ms Wrong
I was nibbling on a Pringle when something caught my eye.2007, Ronnie Blackwell, Serve It Cold. From the entry pringle
Oh you haven't lived till you've had a nibble on a fur burger!2001 August 16, John Duffey, reply in "She will be mine...", alt.babylon5.uk…. From the entry fur burger
Or it could have been that I was nibbling on a hashbrownie at a Canned Heat concert.1999, Howard Altman, “A Few Tokes Over the Line”, in Philadelphia City Paper, 30 September-7 October 1999. From the entry hashbrownie
We drop our eyes, mumble something inarticulate, add more tea to each other’s glasses, and nibble barankas.1984, Jackson J[erald] Benson, “The Last Battle”, in The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry baranka
And a mid-morning or mid-afternoon pick-up does not interfere with appetite as irregular nibbling or piecing does.1956, United States Children's Bureau publication, Your Child from One to Six, US Government Publishing Office, page 46. From the entry piece
A rabbit hops and nibbles unafraidly in and out from the bushes.1938 June, Nell Flatt Goodman, “Mostly About Mrs. Ira Honnald and Her Flowers”, in The Illinois Agricultural Association Record, volume…. From the entry unafraidly
They wallowed lazily, nibbling bits of sea grass, their dorsal fins sometimes cutting through the water, sharklike.1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 125. From the entry sharklike
The little Galician was sitting nibbling a biscuit with a glass of red wine before him.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html)…. From the entry Galician
If he hadn't know better, he'd have thought she was a werehare, something that lived to nibble grass and hide.2020 March 31, MaryJanice Davidson, “Chapter 3”, in Bears Behaving Badly, volume 1, Sourcebooks, Inc., →ISBN. From the entry werehare
I nibbled at a corner of the crumbly, kibbly bread.2019, Joshua Lobb, The Flight of Birds, page 114. From the entry kibbly
Being the curious type I nibbled on a few pods and found they were delicious when still in the immature stage.2015 August, Peter Burke, “Seeds”, in Year-round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-dense Soil-sprouted Greens in Less Than 10…. From the entry radish
Puffins on the Isle of May are nibbling on nurdles, the little nuggets that serve as raw materials for plastics manufacturing.2015 March 27, Amanda Schupak, “Plastic pellets found in puffin tummies”, in CBS News. From the entry nurdle
Instead, he eats 15 to 20 times a day, grazing and nibbling in the manner of our ancestors.2010 October 25, Art Carey, “Constant eating helps senior lose weight”, in The Star, retrieved 04 Jan 2021. From the entry three squares
A cow would find no joy in scampering up craggy hills to nibble nothing more than an agarita bush.2007 June 17, Paula Disbrowe, “The Year of the Goat”, in New York Times. From the entry agarita
Not a cakeful, but more than a nibble.2003, Xcp: Cross-cultural Poetics, page 123. From the entry cakeful
Ramdoss's mother leaned forward, broke off a bit of coocoos, and nibbled at it, signifying that the girl had been accepted.2002, David Davidar, House Of Blue Mangoes. From the entry coocoos
The early pages had marginal notes most of which were lost when rats nibbled away the manuscript edges.1999, R. I. Page, Introduction to English Runes, Boydell Press, page 198. From the entry marginal
She nibbled at the green and purple stems and leaves of the oxalis and seasoned her salads with karambola juice.1997, Muller, Carl, Children Of The Lion, Penguin Group, page 12. From the entry karambola
I picked up a cottage fry and nibbled on it.1989, Dick Belsky, “Romantic Interlude”, in South Street Confidential (A Joan Kahn Book), New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page…. From the entry cottage fry
Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and he was a beautiful butterfly!1969, Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. From the entry butterfly
Tale of some "verbivorous" mice who nibble all the biggest words off the page of the professor's book.1969, Elementary English, volume 46, page 464. From the entry verbivorous

Meaning of nibble

verb To take a small, quick bite, or several of such bites, of (something).
verb To lightly bite (a person or animal, or part of their body), especially in a loving or playful manner; to nip.
verb To make (a hole in something) through small bites.

Full definition of nibble

Questions about nibble in a sentence

How do you use nibble in a sentence?: Nibble is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The rabbit nibbled the lettuce.”
What is a short sentence with nibble?: “The rabbit nibbled the lettuce.”
What does nibble mean?: Nibble means to take a small, quick bite, or several of such bites, of (something).

Adapted from Wiktionary: nibble (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use nibble in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/nibble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.