Nifty
adj, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A possibly risqué comic story or anecdote. colloquial, dated
"New subscribers are the life of our party (any advertiser will tell you that) just as the regular reader of CLIPPINGS becomes the life of any party (and why not with such a supply of “nifties” and bon mots)."
- 2 A trick. colloquial, dated
"[…] Winfield Sheehan had pulled a nifty on the wise guys of Hollywood and the film colony in Southern California when he disappeared for a week with a print of Sunrise, the Murnau picture recently completed."
- 1 Good, smart; useful or beneficial, often in an impressively clever way. colloquial, dated
"a nifty trick for reducing your household energy bill"
- 2 Stylish. colloquial, dated
"nifty gear"
- 1 excellent wordnet
Example
More examples"That was a nifty way of doing it."
Etymology
From *nift + -y. First element is of unknown origin. Possibly theatrical slang, as a shortened, altered form of Magnificat. Alternatively, perhaps a special use of US regional niffed (“put off, peeved”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.