nib

plural nibs · alternative obsolete knib

1. The tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper.

   Ford, whose often acid nib belied a deep love of all things Iberian, is one of 20 British authors profiled in a new Spanish book[…].

   2025 April 20, Sam Jones, “‘Their pursuits are the cigar and the siesta’: how two centuries of British writers helped forge our view of Spain”, in The Observer, →ISSN

   1 more example

   Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them.

   1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC

2. dialectalA bird's beak.

   Synonyms: bill, pecker

3. Bits of trapped dust or other foreign material that form imperfections in painted or varnished surfaces.
4. A piece of a roasted, hulled cocoa bean.
5. A small and pointed thing or part; a point; a prong.

   the little nib or fructifying principle

   1658, Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus

6. One of the handles projecting from a scythe snath.

   Synonyms: thole

7. The shaft of a wagon.

present singular third person nibs · participle present nibbing · participle past nibbed · past nibbed · alternative obsolete knib

1. transitiveTo fit (a pen) with a nib.

   In nibbing the pen, place the inside of the point flat upon the nail of your left-hand thumb (holding the quill between the first and second finger of that hand), and let the whole length of the split be extended thereon, to steady the pen as much as possible […]

   1820, James Henry Lewis, The best method of pen-making

plural NIBs

1. abbreviationinitialismslangfraternityInitialism of newly initiated brother.
2. abbreviationsodium-ion battery; Abbreviation of Na-ion battery (Na is the chemical symbol for sodium.)

   Synonyms: SIB

1. abbreviationnot comparableAbbreviation of new in box: Of a product that is the subject of a consumer sale: new and still in its original packaging; not used.