nimble
/ˈnɪmbəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.07 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Quickwitted and alert.
Example Sentences
- "nimble fingers"
- "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 you imagine would such a mess of Musick be?"
- "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."
- "The quickest and nimblest were probably the oxycones, throwing themselves through the water like discuses."
- "He has a nimble mind and can improvise in any situation."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: nymyl, nǣmel, numol