(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.