nickel

pronunciation

How to pronounce nickel in British English: UK [ˈnɪkl] word uk audio image

How to pronounce nickel in American English: US [ˈnɪkl] word us audio image

Noun:

a hard malleable ductile silvery metallic element that is resistant to corrosion; used in alloys; occurs in pentlandite and smaltite and garnierite and millerite
a United States coin worth one twentieth of a dollar
five dollars worth of a drug
Verb:

plate with nickel

Word Origin

nickel: nickel: [18] The element nickel was named in 1754 by the Swedish mineralogist Axel von Cronstedt. The word he chose was a truncated form of kupfernickel, a term formerly used by German miners for niccolite, a nickle-bearing ore. This meant literally ‘copperdemon’, an allusion probably to the fact that niccolite looks as though it contains copper, but does not. The -nickel part of the term represents a pet form of the name Nikolaus, perhaps chosen for its resemblance to German nix ‘water-sprite’. Nickel was first used for a US five-cent coin (made of a copper and nickel alloy) in the 1880s.

nickel (n.): whitish metal element, 1755, coined in 1754 by Swedish mineralogist Axel von Cronstedt (1722-1765) from shortening of Swedish kopparnickel "copper-colored ore" (from which it was first obtained), a half-translation of German Kupfernickel, literally "copper demon," from Kupfer (see copper) + Nickel "demon, goblin, rascal" (a pet form of masc. proper name Nikolaus, compare English Old Nick "the devil;" see Nicholas); the ore so called by miners because it looked like copper but yielded none. Meaning "coin made partly of nickel" is from 1857, when the U.S. introduced one-cent coins made of nickel to replace the old bulky copper pennies. Application to five-cent piece (originally one part nickel, three parts copper) is from 1883, American English; in earlier circulation there were silver half-dimes. To nickel-and-dime (someone) is from 1964 (nickels and dimes "very small amounts of money" is attested from 1893).