Nickname

How to spell nickname

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nickname

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nickname mean?

1. nounAn informal or affectionate name used in place of a person's real name.
2. verbTo give someone or something an informal name in place of the real one.

Nickname in a sentence

• noun

  His childhood nickname stuck with him all the way through university.

• verb

  The staff would always nickname the new interns after famous footballers.

• noun

  The team gave their fastest runner a nickname based on his speed.

• verb

  Locals tend to nickname the old clock tower simply because of its lean.

Where does nickname come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word began life in Middle English as 'ekename', literally 'an additional name', built from 'eke', an old word meaning 'also' or 'extra' (still faintly alive in the phrase 'to eke out'), plus the ordinary noun 'name'. The curious spelling is the result of a slip of the ear: people heard the phrase 'an ekename' and split it in the wrong place, so 'an ekename' was reanalysed as 'a nekename'. By the 1400s this rebracketed form had settled into 'nickname', with the borrowed 'n' permanently attached to the front. The same kind of mishearing, technically called rebracketing, also gave English 'an apron' (from 'a napron') and 'an umpire' (from 'a noumpere'). Knowing the word is really 'name' with an extra 'nick' stuck on the front explains why it has a doubled-up look but only one 'k'.

How the word is built

• nick- (from 'ekename', meaning an additional name)
• name (a name)