Nifty

How to spell nifty

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nifty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nifty mean?

1. adjectiveParticularly good, clever, neat, or stylish, especially in a small or practical way.

Nifty in a sentence

• The new phone has a nifty feature that scans receipts automatically.

• She found a nifty little trick for folding fitted sheets.

Where does nifty come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Nifty is an American coinage that first surfaces in print around the middle of the nineteenth century, originally as theatrical and sporting slang for something stylish, clever, or pleasingly neat. Its exact origin is genuinely uncertain, and the most repeated suggestion is that it is a clipped and altered form of 'magnificent', supposedly shortened by performers to 'magnificat' and then to 'nifty', though that account is hard to prove. What is clear is that it caught on quickly in the United States as a breezy term of admiration and was eventually adopted across the wider English-speaking world. The -y ending is the familiar English suffix that turns a base into an adjective, the same one seen in 'sporty' and 'classy'. Because the first part of the word has no clear meaningful root, there is nothing in the spelling to anchor it, which is why writers sometimes hesitate over the single f and the i.

How the word is built

• nift (uncertain root)
• -y (adjective suffix)