NICHE
What does "NICHE" mean?
A specialized segment, role, or position particularly well suited to a person or thing.
Meanings
- A comfortable or suitable position in life or employment. After years of drifting, she finally found her niche in restoration carpentry.
- A specialized but profitable corner of a market. The brand thrived by serving a niche that bigger companies ignored.
- A shallow recess in a wall, often holding a statue or vase. A small saint stood in the niche above the chapel door.
- The role and position a species occupies within its ecosystem. Two species rarely share an identical ecological niche for long. technical
- Appealing to a narrow, specialized audience. It's a niche hobby, but its fans are fiercely devoted.
Did you know?
- The word's ecological sense rests on a hard rule: Georgy Gause's 1934 work gave us the competitive exclusion principle, which holds that two species filling the identical niche cannot stably coexist - one always edges the other out.
Word origin
From French 'niche' (a recess for a statue), from Old French 'nichier' (to nest), ultimately from Latin 'nidus' meaning nest.
Remember it
A niche is a NICH-e in the wall - a little nest carved out just for you, echoing its Latin root 'nidus', nest.
A little poem
Carved in the wall, a hollow waits-
not every saint fits every shelf;
the right gap simply holds itself.
tercet
Wordplay
- I opened a store that only sells small wall recesses. It's a very niche market.
What it teaches
Belonging is not about fitting everywhere - it is about finding the one shape the world left empty for you.
Quick facts
What does NICHE mean?
A specialized segment, role, or position particularly well suited to a person or thing.
Is NICHE a valid word?
Yes — NICHE is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is NICHE?
NICHE has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does NICHE come from?
From French 'niche' (a recess for a statue), from Old French 'nichier' (to nest), ultimately from Latin 'nidus' meaning nest.
What can NICHE teach us?
Belonging is not about fitting everywhere - it is about finding the one shape the world left empty for you.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.