What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Shelter vs Nest - What's the difference?

shelter | nest |

In transitive terms the difference between shelter and nest

is that shelter is to provide cover from damage or harassment; to shield; to protect while nest is to place one thing neatly inside another, and both inside yet another (and so on).

In intransitive terms the difference between shelter and nest

is that shelter is to take cover while nest is to hunt for birds' nests or their contents (usually "go nesting").

shelter

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A refuge, haven or other cover or protection from something.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1928, author=Lawrence R. Bourne
  • , title=Well Tackled! , chapter=7 citation , passage=The detective kept them in view. He made his way casually along the inside of the shelter until he reached an open scuttle close to where the two men were standing talking. Eavesdropping was not a thing Larard would have practised from choice, but there were times when, in the public interest, he had to do it, and this was one of them.}}
  • An institution that provides temporary housing for homeless people, battered women etc.
  • Derived terms

    * bus shelter

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To provide cover from damage or harassment; to shield; to protect.
  • * Dryden
  • Those ruins sheltered once his sacred head.
  • * Southey
  • You have no convents in which such persons may be received and sheltered .
  • To take cover.
  • During the rainstorm, we sheltered under a tree.

    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") * ----