nick [LME] Nick has a great many meanings that are apparently unrelated but seem to come from the same verb and noun, whose origin is unknown. The first, most basic meaning is ‘make a nick or notch in’, from which developed various senses to do with striking something or hitting a target. The meaning ‘to apprehend, take into custody’, as in ‘You’re nicked!’, is first found in the play The Prophetesse (1640) by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger: ‘We must be sometimes witty, to nick a knave.’ The sense ‘to steal’ is more recent, dating from the 1820s.

The noun nick first meant ‘notch, cut, or groove’; the sense ‘condition’ (‘you’ve kept the car in good nick’) seems to come from Worcestershire and Gloucestershire dialect, and was first recorded at the end of the 19th century. In the nick of time developed from an old meaning ‘the precise or critical time or moment’, and was in the mid 16th century simply in the nick or the very nick. The slang sense ‘prison’ or ‘police station’ was originally Australian, with the first written evidence in The Sydney Slang Dictionary of 1882. Old Nick, a name for the devil, is probably a shortening of the man’s name Nicholas. One theory as to why this familiar name was adopted links it with the Italian politician and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (see machiavellian), although he is reputed to have been unscrupulous and scheming rather than downright evil. Another is that it is short for Iniquity (see equal), which was the name for the character symbolizing Vice in old morality plays—Old Iniquity is found as a name for the devil in the 19th century. Other names for the devil in parts of Britain are Old Harry, Old Horny, Old Ned, and Old Scratch, so maybe there is no particular reason why Nick should have been chosen.