Verb

(en verb)

To make a nick or notch in; to cut or scratch in a minor way.

I nicked myself while I was shaving.

# To make a cross cut or cuts on the underside of (the tail of a horse, in order to make the animal carry it higher).

# To mar; to deface; to make ragged, as by cutting nicks or notches in.

#* Prior

And thence proceed to nicking sashes.

#* Shakespeare

The itch of his affection should not then / Have nicked his captainship.

To suit or fit into, as by a correspondence of nicks; to tally with.

* Camden

Words nicking and resembling one another are applicable to different significations.

# To hit at, or in, the nick; to touch rightly; to strike at the precise point or time.

#* L'Estrange

The just season of doing things must be nicked , and all accidents improved.

# To throw or turn up (a number when playing dice); to hit upon.

#* {{quote-book, year=1773

, author=Oliver Goldsmith , title=She Stoops to Conquer , text=My old luck: I never nicked seven that I did not throw ames ace three times following.}}

# (cricket) to hit the ball with the edge of the bat and produce a fine deflection

(obsolete) To nickname; to style.

* Ford

For Warbeck, as you nick him, came to me.

(slang) To steal.

Someone's nicked my bike!

(transitive, British, slang) To arrest.

The police nicked him climbing over the fence of the house he'd broken into.

Verb

(divid)

To split or separate (something) into two or more parts.

a wall divides''' two houses; a stream '''divides the towns

* Bible, 1 Kings iii. 25

Divide the living child in two.

To share (something) by dividing it.

* Spenser

true justice unto people to divide

(arithmetic) To calculate the number (the quotient) by which you must multiply one given number (the divisor) to produce a second given number (the dividend).

(arithmetic) To be a divisor of.

To separate into two or more parts.

(biology) Of a cell, to reproduce by dividing.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=[The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, and that in several cases these bacteria were dividing and thus, by the perverse arithmetic of biological terminology, multiplying.}}

To disunite in opinion or interest; to make discordant or hostile; to set at variance.

* Bible, Mark iii. 24

If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

* Prescott

Every family became now divided within itself.

(obsolete) To break friendship; to fall out.

* 1605 , , I. ii. 107:

love cools, friendship / falls off, brothers divide .

(obsolete) To have a share; to partake.

* 1608 , , I. vi. 87:

Make good this ostentation, and you shall / Divide in all with us.

To vote, as in the British Parliament, by the members separating themselves into two parties (as on opposite sides of the hall or in opposite lobbies), that is, the ayes dividing from the noes.

* Gibbon

The emperors sat, voted, and divided with their equals.

To mark divisions on; to graduate.

to divide a sextant

(music) To play or sing in a florid style, or with variations.

(Spenser)