DCHP-1 Online
nipped (in) Arctic 
adj. of ships, caught and held, and sometimes, especially with older wooden vessels, utterly crushed, by the coming together of two ice-floes.
See also: nip
- 1850 (1852) Penny had passed a long way inside of the spot the steamers had been beset and nipped in; and he witnessed a sight which, although constantly taking place, is seldom seen--the entire dissolution of an enormous ice-berg.
- 1861 In the autumn of 1859 the Kitty, of Newcastle, was nipped in the ice and lost in Hudson's Bay, while taking stores out to York Factory.
- 1909 Two years ago the ships bound for "Outside" got nipped in early ice and were forced to winter at Herschel all unprepared.
- 1937 The "Fort James," a Company schooner, was "nipped" in the ice at Tuktuk, on the Western Arctic coast, 4000 miles from the nearest dry-dock.
- 1850 (1852) Penny had passed a long way inside of the spot the steamers had been beset and nipped in; and he witnessed a sight which, although constantly taking place, is seldom seen--the entire dissolution of an enormous ice-berg.