nibbler

English

Etymology

From nibble +‎ -er.

Noun

nibbler (plural nibblers)

1. Someone who nibbles.
   • 1599, anonymous author, “Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook”, in The Passionate Pilgrim‎^[1]:

     But whether unripe years did want conceit, / Or he refused to take her figured proffer, / The tender nibbler would not touch the bait, / But smile and jest at every gentle offer:

   • 1944, Emily Carr, The House of All Sorts‎^[2], Chapter:

     The dog's lean, powerful body dashed down the hill. When the dust of his violence cleared, a sea of dirty white backs was wobbling up the hill, a black-and-white quickness darting now here, now there, straightening the line, hurrying a nibbler, urging a straggler.

   • 1949, Guiding Family Spending, U.S. Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication No. 661, p. 10, [3]

     In carrying out a spending plan, accounts are usually most important for controlling small recurring expenditures as for newspapers, magazines, tobacco, movies, soft drinks, ice cream, and meals eaten out. Many families look upon these as incidentals and may treat them as unimportant. But they may be nibblers, eating away day by day money that is wanted for other things.

2. A tool for cutting sheet metal.
3. A fish of the sea chub subfamily Girellinae.
4. (computing, historical) A kind of program for copying protected floppy disks.
   • 1988, The Software Encyclopedia, volume 2, page 688:

     A-Copier. MegaSoft, Ltd. Full Featured Nibbler.

   • a. 2005, Kleener (Internet forum user) quoted in 2005, Fiona Macmillan, New Directions in Copyright Law (page 234)

     We used a program call ^[sic] Fast Hack 'Em. It had what was called a 'Nibbler'. It had the copy protection schemes for various games stored on one of the program disks, and you would load that up before copying the game. It then 'nibbled' away the protection from the data as it was copied.

Derived terms

• bit nibbler

Translations

someone who nibbles

• French: grignoteur (fr) m, grignoteuse (fr) f
• Greek:

  Ancient: τρώκτης m (trṓktēs)

tool

• French: grignoteuse (fr) f