nickel

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a coin worth five cents in the United States or Canada

   She found a nickel beneath the vending machine.

2. 2
   noun

   a hard, silvery chemical element that resists corrosion and is used in alloys and plating

   The manufacturer added nickel to the steel to improve its resistance to corrosion.

3. 3
   verb

   to coat a metal object with a thin layer of nickel

   The workshop will nickel the fittings before polishing them.

Common collocations

• nickel alloy Noun + noun

Borrowed from German Nickel, used by the Swedish mineralogist Axel F. Cronstedt as a shortening of Kupfernickel, from Kupfer ("copper") + Nickel, a nickname for Nikolaus. Miners applied the name to deceptive copper-colored ore that yielded no copper; it was later transferred to the newly identified metal and then to the five-cent coin.

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images