nifle

English

Etymology

From Middle English nifle, possibly from Anglo-Norman. Compare Scots niffle (“to trifle”). (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “OED gives various theories, none very convincing”)

Noun

nifle (plural nifles)

1. (obsolete) A trifle; something small and insignificant. [15th–17th c.]
   • 1599, Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Nauigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation, […], 2nd edition, London: […] George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, →OCLC, page 193:

     THE great Galees of Venice and Florence
     Be well laden with things of complacence,
     All spicery and of grossers ware:
     With sweete wines all maner of chaffare,
     Apes, and Japes, and marmusets tayled,
     Nifles and trifles that little have avayled:
     And things with which they fetely blere our eye:
     With things not induring that we bye.

   • 1607, Thomas Walkington, The optick glasse of humors. Or The touchstone of a golden temperature, […] , page 83:

     […] but if they be greeued, let their toad-swolne galls burst in sunder for me, with puffing choler: let them turne the buckle of their dudgeon anger behinde, lest the toung of it catch their owne dottril skins, I waigh them not a nifle.

   • 1610, William Camden, “Montgomery-shire”, in Philémon Holland, transl., Britain, or A Chorographicall Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press for] Georgii Bishop & Ioannis Norton, →OCLC, pages 662-663:

     If I should say, that either Duke Medus, or Prince Olanus built this Mediolanum of ours, and those Cities of the same name in Gaule, or that whiles they were a building Sus mediatim Lanata, that is, That a Sow halfe fleeced with wooll, was digged up, might I not be thought (thinke you) to catch at Clouds, and fish for Nifles?

References

• “nifle”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Further reading

• “nifle”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Anagrams

• elfin, lifen