Other forms: nestled, nestling, nestles
To nestle is to settle comfortably into a warm safe place. Nestle into the blankets, nestled against him, a village nestled in the valley.
Of a person it is affectionate and of a place it is a cliché — villages nestle in valleys in nearly every travel description ever written. The word is nest plus an ending, so nestling is literally making a nest of where you are. Note the silent t, and nestling, the young bird.
1verbnestleTo settle comfortably into a warm safe place.
“The kitten nestled into the warm blanket and fell asleep.”
nestle is a settling in.
Old English nestlian means to build a nest, from nest plus -le. Nest itself is very old and Indo-European.
Proto-West Germanic
*nistilōn — to build or occupy a nest; nestle
Old English
nistlan
Middle English
nestelen
English, today
nestle
Built from
From Middle English nestelen, nestlen, from Old English nistlan, nestlian, nistlian (“to make or build a nest”), from Proto-West Germanic nistilōn (“to build or occupy a nest; nestle”), equivalent to nest + -le. Cognate with Middle Low German nëstelen (“to build a nest”), Dutch nestelen (“to nest, nestle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA