nick

name

1. A diminutive of the male given name Nicholas.

   “His name is Nick. I love it. It makes him seem nice, and regular, which he is. When he tells me his name, I say, 'Now, that's a real name.'”

   “You look at the groypers, you look at Nick Fuentes, you look at people who are by any measure white supremacists and people we would have called the kooky Nazi right, with their Pepe the Frog memes — they all felt very ill at home in Mitt Romney’s Republican Party.”

noun

Etymology: A variant of nix or nixie.

1. A nix or nixie (“water spirit”).

   “[A]midst Ahriman and his hosts who had now established themselves in the Occident, and as heirs to the horns and tails of Pans and fauns, a crowd of native spirits moved; imps, giants, trolls, forest-spirits, elves and hobgoblins in and on the earth; nicks, river-sprites in the water, fiends in the air, and salamanders in the fire.”

verb

Etymology: Clipping of nickname.

1. To give or call (someone) by a nickname; to style.

   “For Warbecke as you nicke him, came to me / Commended by the States of Chriſtendome.”