Other forms: nooks
A nook is a small sheltered corner. Just big enough for a chair and a lamp.
The word promises comfort, which is why estate agents and interior magazines use it so freely, and a reading nook is a whole category of thing. A breakfast nook is a small eating space off a kitchen. The essential quality is being tucked away out of the main space. It is best known in the phrase every nook and cranny, meaning absolutely everywhere, which is one of the few places cranny appears at all.
1nounnookA small sheltered corner or recess.
“There was a window seat in a nook by the stairs.”
A nook is a bend. Middle English nok meant a corner or an angle, probably from a Germanic word for a bend or a hook, so a nook is simply where the wall turns.
Proto-Indo-European
*knewg- — to turn, press
Proto-Germanic
*hnukkaz
Old English
hnoc
Middle English
noke
English, today
nook
Built from
From Middle English noke, nok (“nook, corner, angle”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Old English hnoc, hnocc (“hook, angle”), from Proto-Germanic hnukkaz, hnukkô (“a bend”), from Proto-Indo-European knewg- (“to turn, press”), from Proto-Indo-European ken- (“to pinch, press, bend”). If so, then also related to Scots nok (“small hook”), Norwegian - dialectal nok, nokke (“hook, angle, bent object”), Danish nok (“hook”), Swedish nock (“ridge”), Faroese nokki (“crook”), Icelandic hnokki (“hook”), Dutch nok (“ridge”) or Dutch hoek (“corner”), Low German Nocke (“tip”), Old Norse hnúka (“to bend, crouch”), Old English ġehnycned (“drawn, pinched, wrinkled”). Also cognate with Scots neuk, nuk (“corner, angle of a square, angular object”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA