What's the difference between bit and nibble?

Bit


Definition:

  • (v.) The part of a bridle, usually of iron, which is inserted in the mouth of a horse, and having appendages to which the reins are fastened.
  • (v.) Fig.: Anything which curbs or restrains.
  • (v. t.) To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of.
  • () imp. & p. p. of Bite.
  • (v.) A part of anything, such as may be bitten off or taken into the mouth; a morsel; a bite. Hence: A small piece of anything; a little; a mite.
  • (v.) Somewhat; something, but not very great.
  • (v.) A tool for boring, of various forms and sizes, usually turned by means of a brace or bitstock. See Bitstock.
  • (v.) The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers.
  • (v.) The cutting iron of a plane.
  • (v.) In the Southern and Southwestern States, a small silver coin (as the real) formerly current; commonly, one worth about 12 1/2 cents; also, the sum of 12 1/2 cents.
  • () 3d sing. pr. of Bid, for biddeth.
  • (imp.) of Bite
  • () of Bite

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So I am, of course, intrigued about the city’s newest tourist attraction: a hangover bar, open at weekends, in which sufferers can come in and have a bit of a lie down in soothingly subdued lighting, while sipping vitamin-enriched smoothies.
  • (2) He is a leader and helps manage the defence, while Pablo Armero can be a bit of a loose cannon but he is certainly a talented player.
  • (3) Just last week he said: "Maybe I'll be a bit more chilled about it this year.
  • (4) The tissues were derived from the three germ layers and were prevalently mature; only a bit of them was represented by embryonic mesenchymal tissue.
  • (5) In his biography, Tony Blair admits to having accumulated 70 at one point – "considered by some to be a bit of a constitutional outrage", he adds.
  • (6) When I told my friend Rob that I was coming to visit him in Rio, I suggested we try something a bit different to going to the beach every day and drinking caipirinhas until three in the morning.
  • (7) But I know the full story and it’s a bit different from what people see.” The full story is heavy on the extremes of emotion and as the man who took a stricken but much-loved club away from its community, Winkelman knows that his part is that of villain; the war of words will rumble on.
  • (8) Everyone gets a bit excited with the whole ‘youth’ thing but, at our clubs, the managers wouldn’t just play any old youngster.
  • (9) He would do the Telegraph crossword and, to be fair, would make intelligent conversation but he was a bit racist.
  • (10) When my form teacher said I’d worked well in every subject except geography, I made her change the bit that said I’d not tried to say, instead, that I was rubbish at it.
  • (11) I felt like he was a little bit inexperienced and the race got away from him a little bit at the third-last.
  • (12) It just seems a bit of a waste, I say, given that he's young and handsome and famous.
  • (13) Heat vegetable oil and a little bit of butter in a clean pan and fry the egg to your taste.
  • (14) Indeed, with the pageantry already knocked off the top of the news by reports from Old Trafford, the very idea of a cohesive coalition programme about anything other than cuts looks that bit harder to sustain.
  • (15) A bit like the old Lib Dems, perhaps: and indeed the Greens owe a big chunk of their surge to the exodus of voters from Clegg’s discredited rump.
  • (16) Rather than ruthlessly efficient, I have found them sweet and a bit hopeless."
  • (17) So that you know he's evil, he is dressed like a giant, bedraggled grey duckling, in a fur coat made up of bits of chewed-up wolf.
  • (18) Some offer a range, depending on whether you think you're a bit of a buff, and know a pinot meunier from a pinot noir and what prestige cuvée actually means or you just want to see a bit of the process and have a nice glass of bubbly at the end of it, before moving on to the next place – touring a pretty corner of France getting slowly, and delightfully, fizzled.
  • (19) If Carlsberg made adverts for football scouts ... Scott Murray Martial, who could potentially cost Manchester United £58.8m, had quite a bit to prove.
  • (20) It took a little bit of time to come up on the scoreboard, so I was a bit worried.

Nibble


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To bite by little at a time; to seize gently with the mouth; to eat slowly or in small bits.
  • (v. t.) To bite upon something gently or cautiously; to eat a little of a thing, as by taking small bits cautiously; as, fishes nibble at the bait.
  • (n.) A small or cautious bite.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Within an hour after nibbling a small test meal, the flux of glucose C into total body fatty acids increased 700% in mice previously starved for 24 hr.
  • (2) By noon, the small fish market on shore is packed with black crows nibbling on hundreds of butchered fish heads, shark fins and long red swordfish tongues.
  • (3) Across this relatively peaceful corner of the Horn of Africa, where black-headed sheep scamper among the thorn bushes, dainty gerenuk balance on their hind legs to nibble from hardy shrubs, and skinny camels wearing rough-hewn bells lumber over rocky slopes, people long accustomed to a harsh environment find they cannot cope after years of below-average rainfall.
  • (4) £25 a head for a cocktail, nibbles and three courses.
  • (5) variable (VH), diversity (DH), and joining (JH), germline gene segments, exonuclease nibbling of the terminals of these gene segments, and the addition of template-independent nucleotide (N-sequences) in the junctions of these segments.
  • (6) As daylight recedes, men of a certain age sip coffee, nibble on finger dishes or grapple with big round plates of rice and lamb, all the while bouncing opinions back and forth.
  • (7) It appears that CR caused mice to change from their normal "nibbling behavior" to meal feeding.
  • (8) Although this effect does not appear to result from antineophobic and anxiolytic effects of this benzodiazepine, very little is known about the possible contribution of stereotyped nibbling and chewing responses to enhanced feeding.
  • (9) On another, they celebrated her birthday at home with Jill Norman, David's long-time editor, and a bottle of Dom Pérignon, nibbling all the while on her favourite Roka cheese biscuits.
  • (10) It is concluded that these goats have a feeding habit similar to that of cattle rather than resting their forelimbs on the shrubs while nibbling the leaves as recorded in Asian goats.
  • (11) The flux of glucose C to TLFA increased by an order of magnitude within an hour after mice nibbled a test meal for several minutes.
  • (12) It was found that feeding behavior between meals (snacks, nibbling, etc.)
  • (13) He tried to eat some more of his kebab but was confused and began to nibble on the flyerer's thumb.
  • (14) As Shallow, he “pecks at the lines, nibbles at them like a parrot biting on a nut; for all his age, he darts here and there nimbly enough, even skittishly: forgetting nothing, not even the pleasure of Falstaff’s page, that ‘little tiny thief’.” But if Tynan was enamoured of Olivier, he was also alert to the miniaturist precision of Alec Guinness.
  • (15) Comparisons between present-day China and the soulless, dreary totalitarian socialist state immortalised in Orwell's masterpiece are difficult to sustain after seeing clutch after clutch of Chinese teenagers, dressed in the latest quasi-Japanophile fashion, walk down a mobbed Beijing pedestrian shopping arcade nibbling at bouquets of candy floss and prattling on as if the phrase "commodity fetishism" had never crossed their young lips.
  • (16) Just about everything – from what to serve, to how to eat, nothing brings out more social judgment than nibbles etiquette.
  • (17) The young Caligula spent six years on the island of Capri, where he often directed and appeared in spectacular pornographic tableaux for his great uncle, the emperor Tiberius – a man it was said, who enjoyed having swimming boys nibble at his private parts.
  • (18) Recordings were made for 96-h periods, and nibbling bouts were separated from meals according to the time and weight of eating bouts.
  • (19) We have attempted to measure net changes in lipid content in a discrete "intermuscular" fat pad during rapid lipogenic activation that occurs after a previously fasted mouse nibbles a glucose-rich test meal for several minutes.
  • (20) A case report is presented of a patient who had liver fibrosis, splenomegaly and ascites, associated with the habit of nibbling tea leaves.

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