noun
nickel
A silvery metal; in North America, a five-cent coin.
Where it comes from
Nickel ordinarily means a silvery metal; in North America, a five-cent coin. The metal's name was shortened from Swedish kopparnickel, modeled on German Kupfernickel. Kupfer means copper; Nickel was a familiar form of Nikolaus used for a goblin or rascal. Miners applied the name to copper-looking ore that would not yield the copper they expected. Axel Fredrik Cronstedt isolated a previously unrecognized metal from the deceptive ore in 1751 and named it nickel in the 1750s.
How the meaning developed
The United States coin later took the metal's name because its alloy contained nickel, although modern nickels are mostly copper.
Sources
- Nickel: Element information, properties and uses
- Nickel: Etymology, Origin & Meaning
- Nickel: étymologie de nickel
Definitions adapted from Open English WordNet where applicable. License and attribution. Word-history text comes from Lexifour’s sourced social research; pages are assembled automatically, not individually fact-checked on every update.
Updated 2026-10-05. Report a correction.