English
nim
Pronunciation Verb

nim (nims, present participle nimming; past nimmed, past participle nimmed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To take or seize.
    • 1381, Pegge Cook. Recipes, page 114, quoted in 1962, Hans Kurath & Sherman M. Kuhn, eds., Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-01044-8, page 1242, in the entry "dorrẹ̄, dōrī adj. & n. […] cook":
      For to make Soupys dorry. Nym onyons […] Nym wyn […] toste wyte bred and do yt in dischis, and god Almande mylk.
    • 1547 (original; printed 1870), Andrew Boorde, The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, page 122:
      Ich cham a Cornysche man, al[e] che can brew; [...] Nym me a quart of ale, that iche may it of sup.
    • 1566–1573 (original; printed 1873), John Partridge, The Hystorie of the Moste Noble Knight Plasidas, and Other Rare Pieces, page 106:
      Then Alfyne to the court Of Syleuma doth come, / And Pandauola in her armes / Her Alfyne hath up num / And kisseth him full ofte […]
    • 2017, Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed With Kindness, Bloomsbury Publishing (ISBN 9781408151969), page 155:
      Gryndall carefully sets out the difference between seizing or nimming a bird (an outcome that would constitute a partly successful flight) and taking the bird outright: 'And if your Hawke noume [nim, seize] a foule, and the foule breake from her, she hath discomfited many feathers of the foule, and is broken away: but in kindly speech you shall say, your hawke hath noumed or seased a foule, and not taken it'.
  2. (obsolete, slang, transitive) To filch, steal.
    • 1663, Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, part 1, canto 1
      They'll question Mars, and, by his look, \ Detect who 'twas that nimm'd a cloak;
    • 1785, Hutton, Bran New Wark, I. 305, quoted in 1903, Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary: M-Q, page 273:
      Nimming and niftering whativver he can try his fists on.
    • 1821, Apuleius, The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius, of Medaura, page 131:
      But while he fell in some brave exploit, you, I suppose, being provident rogues and thieves of discretion, were on the sure lay, pilfering little thefts among the mob, fearfully nimming a cloak or rifling some old woman's bulk of a stock to set up a piece-broker's shop.
    • 1824 (edition; original 1790), Nairne, Tales, 37, quoted in 1903, Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary: M-Q, page 273:
      They nim a pig, a duck, or fowl.
    • 1854, Oliver Oldham, Oldham's Amusing and Instructive Reader: A Course of Reading, Original and Selected, in Prose and Poetry, Wherein Wit, Humor, and Mirth are Made the Means of Awakening Interest, and Imparting Instructon : for the Use of Schools and Academies, page 110:
      Shall we go nim a horse, Tom,—what dost think? [...] Nim? yes, yes, yes, let's nim with all my heart; I see no harm in nimming, for my part; [...] Were it my lord mayor's hourse—I'd nim it first. [...A horse] they stole, or, as they called it, nimmed, / Just as the twilight all the landscape dimmed. [...] What is most likely, is that both these elves / Were, in like manner, halter-nimmed themselves.
  3. (intransitive, UK dialectal) To walk with short, quick strides; trip along.
    • 1856, Thompson, Hist. Boston, page 716, quoted in 1903, Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary: M-Q, page 273:
      The old lady does nim along.
    • 1949, Wilfrid J. Halliday, Arthur Stanley Umpleby, The White Rose Garland of Yorkshire Dialect Verse and Local and Folk-lore Rhymes, quoting Irene Sutcliffe, page 111:
      Ah had set myself doon where the aums meet aboon, / When Jinny jamp oop, and ganned nimming alang.
Related terms Noun

nim (uncountable)

  1. A game in which players take turns removing objects from heaps.


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