nib

The tip of a pen or tool that touches the surface, transferring ink to paper.

• Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them.
• Ford, whose often acid nib belied a deep love of all things Iberian, is one of 20 British authors profiled in a new Spanish book[…].

A bird's beak.dialectal

Bits of trapped dust or other foreign material that form imperfections in painted or varnished surfaces.

A piece of a roasted, hulled cocoa bean.

A small and pointed thing or part; a point; a prong.

• the little nib or fructifying principle

One of the handles projecting from a scythe snath.

The shaft of a wagon.

To fit (a pen) with a nib.transitive

• In nibbing the pen, place the inside of the point flat upon the nail of your left-hand thumb (holding the quill between the first and second finger of that hand), and let the whole length of the split be extended thereon, to steady the pen