(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.
Nibbler
Definition:
(n.) One who, or that which, nibbles.
Example Sentences:
(1) Meal-eaters again, retained as much nitrogen as nibblers, and contained less body fat than the nibblers.
(2) Meal-eaters gained essentially the same amount of body weight as the nibblers.
(3) When an automated control unit is not available, the vitreous nibbler may be used with manual suction, gravity-controlled infusion, and a simplified control unit.
(4) Meal-feeders eating the low-fat diet became no fatter than nibblers of this diet, possibly because they were eating less than their daily ad lib.
(5) The former group seemed to be a "nibbler type" rather than a "meal feeder type".
(6) Rats were allowed to eat only 2 hr per day (meal-fed) or were fed ad libitum (nibbler) for 12 wk; another group of animals was meal-fed for 3 wk and then fed ad libitum (converted I) while the fourth group of rats (converted II) was meal-fed for 3 wk, allowed to nibble for the next 3 wk, meal-fed from the 6th to 9th wk and then returned to ad libitum feeding for the last 3 wk.
(7) No significant differences between nibblers and gorgers were found.
(8) The present techniques of vitrectomy employ the open sky method (anterior approach) which is usually performed using cellulose sponges and blunt scissors, or the pars plana approach (transcleral approach) which uses a vitreous nibbler.
(9) Glycogen levels in the adipose tissue of meal-fed rats were greater than the levels in the nibblers.
(10) Description of Grieshaber nibbler for closed vitreous surgery: tip diameter is 1.6 mm, cutting is by four exquisitely cutting blades mounted on axis supported at both ends.
(11) In addition, mechanical vitreous nibblers used for the open sky approach are reviewed.
(12) For both diets meal-feeders had greater stomach plus small intestine weights than nibblers and had higher plasma free fatty acid levels, when they were killed 15 h after their last meal.
(13) Rats were either fed 2 hours per 24 or 48 hours (meal-eaters), or pair-fed to meal-eaters with an automated feeding machine (nibblers).
(14) Two methods in which [U-14C]glucose was injected intraperitoneally before or after different test-meals confirmed an apparent 100- to 200-fold increase in lipogenesis (14C incorporation into fatty acids) in epididymal fat pads of gorgers; however, incorporation of 14C into total fatty acids in the whole body of gorgers was only five times greater than in nibblers.
(15) The other weight-cycled group (nibblers) was fed by automated feeders in several small meals during each 24-h period (i.e., prevented from gorging).
(16) The muscular carcass in both nibblers an gorgers contained more than 75% of the total radioactivity in the fatty acids derived from glucose; liver and epididymal fat pad accounted for only a small percentage.