(v. t.) To bite, as something hard or tough, which is not readily separated or crushed; to bite off little by little, with effort; to wear or eat away by scraping or continuous biting with the teeth; to nibble at.
(v. t.) To bite in agony or rage.
(v. t.) To corrode; to fret away; to waste.
(v. i.) To use the teeth in biting; to bite with repeated effort, as in eating or removing with the teethsomething hard, unwiedly, or unmanageable.
Example Sentences:
(1) )-induced gnawing behavior in rats was slightly more potent than that of clocapramine.
(2) Gallic wine sales in the UK have been tumbling for the past 20 years, but the news that France, once the largest exporter to these shores, has slipped behind Australia, the United States, Italy and now South Africa will have producers gnawing their knuckles in frustration.
(3) This suggests that the locomotor stimulation induced by amphetamine involves central norepinephrine, while dopamine neurons play an important role in the induced compulsive gnawing behavior.
(4) The gnawing behavior is probably associated with the increase in brain dopamine resulting from this treatment.
(5) And those who preach or teach extremism, those who say we should not respect other Australians, those who seek to gnaw away at that social fabric, are not helping the Australian dream.
(6) The IT administration of THA, nicotine and cytisine was also associated with gnawing, vocalization and hyperactivity and in the case of THA, diarrhoea.
(7) Apomorphine-induced gnawing and licking but not sniffing were attenuated in rats with GP lesions.
(8) In control rats, SKF 38393 enhanced the stereotyped responses induced by quinpirole, converting lower-level stereotypies (sniffing and rearing) to more intense oral behaviors (licking and gnawing).
(9) Previous reports demonstrated that hypothalamic stimulation may elicit either eating, drinking, or gnawing and emphasized both the specificity of the neural circuits mediating these behaviors and the similarity to behavior during natural-drive states such as hunger and thirst.
(10) The thymoleptics imipramine, desipramine, protriptyline, nortriiptyline, chlorimipramine and amitriptyline all potentiate gnawing of mice induced by Dopa following decarboxylase inhibitior Ro 4-4602.
(11) This study was designed to assess whether phencyclidine (PCP) produces dopamine (DA)-dependent behaviors such as licking, gnawing and biting (which are not observed in normal rats) in rats after pretreatments with a tryptophan hydroxylase inhibitor, p-chlorophenylalanine (PCPA) and specific serotonergic neuronal toxin, p-chloroamphetamine (PCA).
(12) In freely moving conditions, electrical brain stimulation (EBS) of this part of the mesencephalon elicited mainly aversive effects (escape reactions: violent running and explosive jumps), but also ipsiversive circling and "gnawing."
(13) In contrast, bilateral intranigral injection of the selective delta agonist D-Pen2,D-Pen5 enkephalin (DPDPE) elicited dose-dependent exploratory behavior and rearing but failed to produce gnawing.
(14) The specific D-2 agonist LY 171555 elicited yawning, genital grooming, exploratory behavior, downward sniffing and licking but failed to induce gnawing even at high doses.
(15) The behavior categories included grooming, yawning, turning, nodding and gnawing, as well as snout contact and nonsnout contact variants of locomoting, rearing and sitting.
(16) The big four supermarket chains are battling over the squeezed middle market which is being gnawed away by Waitrose at the top and the rapidly expanding discounters Aldi and Lidl at the bottom.
(17) In order to test the possibility that the substantia nigra (SN) might be involved, the amount of food intake and gnawing produced by mild tail pinch were assessed following bilateral microinjections of opioid antagonists into the SN.
(18) When B-HT 920 was combined with SKF 38393 following pretreatment with idazoxane, both the intensity and form (continual licking and gnawing) of stereotyped behavior was enhanced.
(19) The effects of clonidine, an indirectly-acting cholinergic antagonist, on 5 behaviors elicited by atropine (locomotion, rearing, sniffing, grooming and gnawing) were studied in rats.
(20) The sensory word descriptors (crushing, sharp, tearing, cutting, penetrating, gnawing, dull, pulling, sore, stinging, pricking and pinching) and the affective word descriptors (dreadful, torturing, killing, unbearable, terrifying, suffocating, exhausting, unhappy, troublesome, annoying, irritating and fearful) are suggested as a foundation upon which a pain assessment tool could be developed for use in clinical practice.
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.