What's the difference between bite and nibble?

Bite


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To seize with the teeth, so that they enter or nip the thing seized; to lacerate, crush, or wound with the teeth; as, to bite an apple; to bite a crust; the dog bit a man.
  • (v. t.) To puncture, abrade, or sting with an organ (of some insects) used in taking food.
  • (v. t.) To cause sharp pain, or smarting, to; to hurt or injure, in a literal or a figurative sense; as, pepper bites the mouth.
  • (v. t.) To cheat; to trick; to take in.
  • (v. t.) To take hold of; to hold fast; to adhere to; as, the anchor bites the ground.
  • (v. i.) To seize something forcibly with the teeth; to wound with the teeth; to have the habit of so doing; as, does the dog bite?
  • (v. i.) To cause a smarting sensation; to have a property which causes such a sensation; to be pungent; as, it bites like pepper or mustard.
  • (v. i.) To cause sharp pain; to produce anguish; to hurt or injure; to have the property of so doing.
  • (v. i.) To take a bait into the mouth, as a fish does; hence, to take a tempting offer.
  • (v. i.) To take or keep a firm hold; as, the anchor bites.
  • (v.) The act of seizing with the teeth or mouth; the act of wounding or separating with the teeth or mouth; a seizure with the teeth or mouth, as of a bait; as, to give anything a hard bite.
  • (v.) The act of puncturing or abrading with an organ for taking food, as is done by some insects.
  • (v.) The wound made by biting; as, the pain of a dog's or snake's bite; the bite of a mosquito.
  • (v.) A morsel; as much as is taken at once by biting.
  • (v.) The hold which the short end of a lever has upon the thing to be lifted, or the hold which one part of a machine has upon another.
  • (v.) A cheat; a trick; a fraud.
  • (v.) A sharper; one who cheats.
  • (v.) A blank on the edge or corner of a page, owing to a portion of the frisket, or something else, intervening between the type and paper.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Some dental applications of the pressure measuring sheet, such as the measurement of biting pressure and balance during normal and unilateral biting, were examined.
  • (2) But do you know the thing that really bites?” he pointed to his home, which was not visible behind an overgrown hedge.
  • (3) Admission venom levels also correlated with the extent of local swelling and the occurrence of tissue necrosis at the site of the bite.
  • (4) The mosquitoes coming to bite in bedrooms were monitored with light traps set beside untreated bednets.
  • (5) The EMG silent periods (SP) produced in the open-close-clench cycle and jaw-jerk reflex were compared for duration before and after treatment with an occlusal bite splint.
  • (6) In Colchester, David Sherwood of Fenn Wright reported: "High tenant demand but increasingly tenants in rent arrears as the recession bites."
  • (7) To test the hypothesis that EAA agonists are involved in transmission of nociceptive information in the spinal cord, we tested the effect of various opioid, sigma and phencyclidine compounds on the action of NMDA in the tail-flick, hot-plate and biting and scratching nociceptive tests.
  • (8) The most reproducible instrument was the combination of Regisil, an elastic impression material, and a Rinn XCP bite block.
  • (9) Changes of mineral content in the approximal enamel of the teeth were determined in situ with quantitative bite-wing radiography.
  • (10) In contrast, large territories may reflect widespread motor-unit actions, advantageous in force development where fine movement control is less important, as in biting in the intercuspal position or opposing gravity.
  • (11) In the last 5 years, 29 children have been treated in our institution for snake bites, all with signs of envenomation.
  • (12) Forty patients with Crotalidae snake bites were evaluated and treated over a 7-year period.
  • (13) Considering the construction of the bite, beside the two usual procedures: a direct and indirect method with the different steps of the laboratory, we can realize a mixed one which all the advantages without the defects of both.
  • (14) The peak biting activity of the vector and peak appearance of microfilariae in the peripheral blood occurred at about 01.00 h, which accounts for the optimum infection of the vector population.
  • (15) The results of this study indicate that, with all other factors held constant, a patient's attrition score tends to: increase with age, increase with bite depth, decrease initially with overjet until a critical value and then increase, and be unaffected by sex, interincisal angle, U1 to NA angle, Angle classification, posterior or anterior cross bites.
  • (16) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (17) Masticatory efficiency was measured by means of a spectrophotometer, using adenosine triphosphate (ATP) granules, the biting force and occlusal contact area.
  • (18) Wearing the bite plane mainly reduced activities of the temporal muscles.
  • (19) Flank marks, attacks, bites, and retreats were scored over a 15 min test period during which steroid-injected animals were paired in a neutral arena with vehicle-injected conspecifics.
  • (20) African children had significantly fewer prevalences of distal bite, lateral crossbite and crowding than Finnish children did.

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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