nickel

noun

1. (uncountable)A silvery elemental metal with an atomic number of 28 and symbol Ni.
2. (Canada, US, countable)A coin worth 5 cents.

   “That is just objectively terrifying regardless of contexts! He looks like if a nickel did cocaine!”

3. (US, broadly, countable, slang, uncountable)Five dollars.
4. (US, broadly, countable, slang, uncountable)Five hundred dollars.
5. (US, countable, slang, uncountable)Interstate 5, a highway that runs along the west coast of the United States.
6. (countable, slang, uncountable)A playing card with the rank of five
7. (US, countable, slang, uncountable)A five-year prison sentence.
8. (countable, uncountable)A defensive formation with five defensive backs, one of whom is a nickelback, instead of the more-common four.
9. (UK, countable, uncountable)An airborne propaganda leaflet.

   “Colonel Hazeltine still had trouble persuading air commanders to drop the nickels. Pilots profanely protested against risking their necks on such foolishness. But in the end 15,000,000 leaflets a week were being dropped on Sicily and Italy.”

   “Many types of nickels were used in psychological warfare. Classified according to general purpose, there were strategic and tactical leaflets.”

   “Nickels, the code-name for propaganda leaflets, were ordinary 8-1/2×11" sheets of paper either printed on both sides or folded in half and printed on all four sides. […] On most of our flights, after leaving the DZ or landing strip we distributed 150 to 450 pounds of nickels over designated areas, and a few of our missions were nickel runs only.”

adj

1. (US, dated, idiomatic, not-comparable)Synonym of cheap: Low price and/or low value.

   “Let me give you the nickel tour of the office.”

verb

1. (transitive)To plate with nickel.
2. (UK)To distribute airborne leaflet propaganda.

   “The 422d Bombardment Squadron extended the scope of its operations considerably in April and "attacked" Norwegian targets with the leaflet bomb. The number of cities nickeled per mission also increased until it was common for fifteen to twenty-five to be scheduled as targets for a five-plane mission.”

   “We flew numerous nickeling missions over the population centers of Southern France, dropping thousands of pounds of leaflets.”

   “From southern Greece to northern Italy, nickeling supplied both occupied peoples and their occupiers with fairly frequent and generally accurate reports of the war — in many cases, their only authoritative source of information.”

name

1. A surname originating as a patronymic.