Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A silvery, hard, ductile, ferromagnetic metallic element used in corrosion-resistant alloys, stainless steel, catalysts for hydrogenation, and batteries, and for electroplating. Atomic number 28; atomic weight 58.69; melting point 1,455°C; boiling point 2,913°C; specific gravity 8.902; valence 0, 1, 2, 3. cross-reference: Periodic Table.
  • noun A coin of the United States or Canada worth five cents.
  • transitive verb To coat with nickel.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To plate or coat, as metal surfaces, with nickel, either by electrolytic processes or by chemical operations.
  • noun Chemical symbol, Ni; atomic weight, 58. A metal closely related to cobalt, with which it almost always occurs.
  • noun In the United States, a current coin representing the value of five cents, made of an alloy of one part of nickel to three of copper.
  • Consisting of or covered with nickel.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Chem.) A bright silver-white metallic element of atomic number 28. It is of the iron group, and is hard, malleable, and ductile. It occurs combined with sulphur in millerite, with arsenic in the mineral niccolite, and with arsenic and sulphur in nickel glance. Symbol Ni. Atomic weight 58.70.
  • noun Colloq. U.S. A small coin made of or containing nickel; esp., a five-cent piece.
  • noun an alloy of nickel, copper, and zinc; -- usually called german silver; called also argentan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable A silvery elemental metal with an atomic number of 28 and symbol Ni.
  • noun US, Canada, countable A coin worth 5 cents.
  • noun US slang, by extension Five dollars.
  • noun US slang, by extension Five hundred dollars.
  • noun US slang Interstate 5, a highway that runs along the west coast of the United States.
  • noun slang A playing card with the rank of five
  • noun US slang A five-year prison sentence.
  • verb transitive To plate with nickel.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun five dollars worth of a drug
  • verb plate with nickel
  • 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
  • noun a United States coin worth one twentieth of a dollar

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Swedish, short for kopparnickel, niccolite, partial translation of German Kupfernickel : Kupfer, copper + Nickel, demon, rascal, from the deceptive copper color of the ore (from the name Nikolaus, Nicholas).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Swedish nickel, an abbreviation of German kupfernickel ("a mineral containing copper and nickel"), from koppar ("copper") + Nikolaus ("the devil") due to the deceptive silver colour of the relatively valueless ore. Compare cobalt as related to kobolds.

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  • Ni.

    December 16, 2007