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Cave vs Nest - What's the difference?

cave | nest |

As nouns the difference between cave and nest

is that cave is a large, naturally-occurring cavity formed underground, or in the face of a cliff or a hillside while nest is a structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.

As verbs the difference between cave and nest

is that cave is to surrender while nest is to build or settle into a nest.

As an interjection cave

is look out!; beware.

As a proper noun Cave

is {{surname}.

cave

English

Etymology 1

(etyl), from (etyl) ).

Noun

(en noun)
  • A large, naturally-occurring cavity formed underground, or in the face of a cliff or a hillside.
  • * , chapter=16
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=The preposterous altruism too!
  • A hole, depression, or gap in earth or rock, whether natural or man-made.
  • * {{quote-book, 1918, Edward Alfred Steiner, Uncle Joe's Lincoln citation
  • , passage=Every boy at one time or another has dug a cave ; I suppose because ages and ages ago his ancestors had to live in caves,
  • A storage cellar, especially for wine or cheese.
  • A place of retreat, such as a man cave.
  • (caving) A naturally-occurring cavity in bedrock which is large enough to be entered by an adult.
  • (nuclear physics) A shielded area where nuclear experiments can be carried out.
  • * {{quote-book, 1986, National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, Radiation Alarms and Access Control Systems, page=45 citation
  • , passage=These potential radiation fields or radioactive material levels may be the result of normal operations (ie, radiation in a target cave )
  • (drilling, uncountable) Debris, particularly broken rock, which falls into a drill hole and interferes with drilling.
  • * {{quote-book, 1951, James Deans Cumming, Diamond Drill Handbook, page=134 citation
  • , passage=
  • (mining) A collapse or cave-in.
  • * {{quote-book, 1885, (Angelo Heilprin), Town Geology: The Lesson of the Philadelphia Rocks, page=79 citation
  • , passage=The "breasts" of marble which unite the opposite lateral walls have been left standing in order to prevent a possible cave of the wall on either side.}}
  • The vagina.
  • * {{quote-book, 1976, (Chester Himes), My Life of Absurdity, page=59 citation
  • , passage=Then without a word she lay on her back in the bed, her dark blond pubic hair rising about her dark wet cave like dried brush about a hidden spring.}}
  • A group that breaks from a larger political party or faction on a particular issue.
  • * {{quote-book, 1964, Leon D. Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis, page=125 citation
  • , passage=Without joining the cave , Hyde had abstained both in December 1956 and May 1957.}}
  • (obsolete) Any hollow place, or part; a cavity.
  • * Francis Bacon
  • the cave of the ear
    Synonyms
    *
    Derived terms
    * caveman * cave painting * cavewoman

    Verb

    (cav)
  • To surrender.
  • He caved under pressure.
  • To collapse.
  • First the braces buckled, then the roof began to cave , then we ran.
  • To hollow out or undermine.
  • The levee has been severely caved by the river current.
  • To engage in the recreational exploration of caves; to spelunk.
  • I have caved from Yugoslavia to Kentucky.
    Let's go caving this weekend.
  • (mining) In room-and-pillar mining, to extract a deposit of rock by breaking down a pillar which had been holding it in place.
  • The deposit is caved by knocking out the posts.
  • (mining, obsolete) To work over tailings to dress small pieces of marketable ore.
  • * {{quote-book, 1999, Andy Wood, The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520-1770, page=319 citation
  • , passage=As an indication of the miners' desperation in these years, the free miners of Wensley lowered themselves to caving for scraps of ore. }}
  • (obsolete) To dwell in a cave.
  • (Shakespeare)
    Derived terms
    * block caving * cave in * caver * caving hammer

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) .

    Interjection

    (en interjection)
  • (British, public school slang) look out!; beware!
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    nest

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A structure built by a bird as a place to incubate eggs and rear young.
  • A place used by another mammal, fish, amphibian or insect, for depositing eggs and hatching young.
  • A snug, comfortable, or cozy residence or job situation.
  • A retreat, or place of habitual resort.
  • A hideout for bad people to frequent or haunt; a den.
  • a nest of thieves
    ''That nightclub is a nest of strange people!
  • A home that a child or young adult shares with a parent, guardian, or a person acting in the capacity of a parent or guardian. A parental home.
  • ''I am aspiring to leave the nest .
  • (cards) A fixed number of cards in some bidding games awarded to the highest bidder allowing him to exchange any or all with cards in his hand.
  • ''I was forced to change trumps when I found the ace, jack, and nine of diamonds in the nest .
  • (military) A fortified position for a weapon, e.g. a machine gun nest.
  • (computing) A structure consisting of nested structures, such as nested loops or nested subroutine calls.
  • * 1981 , Donnamaie E. White, Bit-Slice Design: Controllers and ALU's , Garland STPM Press, ISBN 9780824071035, page 49:
  • Subroutine 4 cannot jump out of the subroutine nest in one step. Each return address must be popped from the stack in the order in which it was pushed onto the stack.
  • * 1993 August, Bwolen Yang et al., "Do&Merge: Integrating Parallel Loops and Reductions", in Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (workshop proceedings), Springer (1994), ISBN 978-3-540-57659-4, page 178:
  • Our analysis to this point has assumed that in a loop nest , we are only parallelizing a single loop.
  • A circular bed of pasta, rice, etc. to be topped or filled with other foods.
  • (geology) An aggregated mass of any ore or mineral, in an isolated state, within a rock.
  • A collection of boxes, cases, or the like, of graduated size, each put within the one next larger.
  • A compact group of pulleys, gears, springs, etc., working together or collectively.
  • Derived terms

    * don't shit in your own nest * feather one's nest / feather one's own nest * nest egg

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (of animals) To build or settle into a nest.
  • To settle into a home.
  • We loved the new house and were nesting there in two days!
  • To successively neatly fit inside another.
  • I bought a set of nesting mixing bowls for my mother.
  • To place in, or as if in, a nest.
  • To place one thing neatly inside another, and both inside yet another (and so on).
  • There would be much more room in the attic if you had nested all the empty boxes.
  • To hunt for birds' nests or their contents (usually "go nesting").
  • * 1895 , Alfred Emanuel Smith, Francis Walton
  • After the first heavy frost, when acorns were falling, I took a friend into partnership and went nesting .

    Anagrams

    * (l) * (l) * (l), (l) * (l) * (l), (l)

    See also

    * (wikipedia "nest") * ----