Other forms: niches
A niche is a small hollow set into a wall — the shallow arched space that holds a statue, a vase or a candle. Then the word moved indoors, into your life: your niche is the small corner of work or interest that fits you exactly, the thing nobody else in the room does.
Business took it hardest. A niche market is a small specific group of customers, and as an adjective niche means made for a few people rather than everybody: a niche hobby, a niche magazine, tastes too niche for the high street. Biology has its own strict sense — an animal's niche is the exact role and place it holds in an ecosystem. The usual verb is carve: she carved out a niche for herself repairing old cameras. Two pronunciations are in use, the French-sounding neesh and the older nitch.
1nounnicheA small hollow space set into a wall, used to hold a statue, vase or candle.~17%
“A stone saint stood in a niche above the church door.”
2nounjobA job, position or activity that suits a particular person exactly.~4%
“It took him ten years to find his niche.”
3nouncustomersA small specific group of customers, or the products made for them.~25%
“The company found a niche selling tools to left-handed cooks.”
4adjectiveratherMade for a small specific group rather than for everybody.~46%
“The magazine is niche, but its readers are loyal.”
5nounroleThe particular role and place a plant or animal holds in its environment.~8%
“Each bird on the island occupies a slightly different niche.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 24 sentences found in the wild and placed 24 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
niche is a small space or position.
Niche came from French niche, from the verb nicher, to make a nest, and behind that Latin nīdus, a nest. So a niche is a nest hollowed out of a wall — and nest itself is a distant cousin of the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*sed-
Latin
nīdus — nest
Vulgar Latin
*nīdicāre
Old French
niche
Middle French
niche
French
niche
English, today
niche
Built from
French niche, from Middle French niche, from Old French niche, from nicher (“to make a nest”) (modern French nicher), from Vulgar Latin nīdicāre, from Latin nīdus (“nest”). a doublet of nidus and nide via Latin and nest via Proto-Indo-European -; also related to nyas.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA