nook
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: no͝ok
ipa: /nʊk/
ipa: /nʉk/
enpr: no͞ok
ipa: /nuːk/
rhymes: -ʊk
homophone: Knook
homophone: (foot-goose merger) nuke
Forms: form: nooks
form: nooking
form: nooked
form: nooked
Etymology: From Middle English noke, nok (“nook, corner, angle”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Old English hnoc, hnocc (“hook, angle”), from Proto-Germanic *hnukkaz, *hnukkô (“a bend”), from Proto-Indo-European *knewg- (“to turn, press”), from Proto-Indo-European *ken- (“to pinch, press, bend”).
If so, then also related to Scots nok (“small hook”), Norwegian dialectal nok, nokke (“hook, angle, bent object”), Danish nok (“hook”), Swedish nock (“ridge”), Faroese nokki (“crook”), Icelandic hnokki (“hook”), Dutch nok (“ridge”) or Dutch hoek (“corner”), Low German Nocke (“tip”), Old Norse hnúka (“to bend, crouch”), Old English ġehnycned (“drawn, pinched, wrinkled”). Also cognate with Scots neuk, nuk (“corner, angle of a square, angular object”).
Senses: examples: text: Mrs. Fluent was nooked with their hostess in the corner of another, a retiring woman, remarkably pretty withal, as your ministers' wives generally are, and no wonder, since the ministers, if at all popular, usually have their pick among the young lambs — we mean the young ladies — of their flocks.
ref: 1852, Alban: A Tale of the New World, page 248:
text: 'Tis the marrow of health In the forest to lie, Where, nooking in stealth, They enjoy her supply
ref: 1855, Charles Rogers, The modern Scottish minstrel:
text: The author of Aunt Jeannie, the play in which Mrs. Patrick Campbell has starred, makes one of his characters say : " Half the time you were nooking with Daisy, the rest with Mrs. Halton.
ref: 1905, Appleton's Magazine - Volume 5, page 847:
text: We laughed, we loved, we nooked. And it worked.
ref: 2014, Alice Clayton, Rusty Nailed, page 251:
glosses: To withdraw into a nook.
examples: text: The city of Gotham is an island, as we have said; and once it was a beautiful island, affording to the gaze of him who sailed along its shores, an agreeable mixture of rock and grove, topping hill and marshiy low ground, spakling here and there with the villas or country-houses of the wealthy Gothamites, mostly built of wood painted white, and adorned with long verandahs quite encircling them; or showing at some turn a humbler, but substantial abode, nooked under a mighty horse-chestnut, the headquarters of a milk-farm, with cattle (whose tinkling bells you could hear in the still evening) grazing on its wild up-hilly pasture-land.
ref: 1860, Jedediah Vincent Huntington, A Tale of Real Life, Or, Blonde and Brunette, page 8:
text: Stairs descended to larders, pantries were cleverly nooked into alcoves, and beyond the open windows sprawled lush gardens.
ref: 2009, Karen Marie Moning, Beyond the Highland Mist:
text: There are yet more hives nooked into the very walls that encircle the city, and tucked in trees that edge the fields beyond the walls.
ref: 2014, Lois Leveen, Juliet's Nurse, page 233:
text: I think she saw that I was disappointed, and a trifle shy at going alone, so off we went together —Charmion a marvel of unobtrusive elegance in grey, and I "taking the eye” in sapphire-blue—along the breezy lane, past the closed gates of Uplands, through the shuttered High Street into the tiny square, in a corner of which the church was nooked, with the vicarage garden adjoining the churchyard.
ref: 2018, George de Horne Vaizey, The Lady of the Basement Flat, page 64:
glosses: To situate in a nook.