Word Watch: Nestled

The intransitive verb “to nestle” is not an uncommon word, but it has enjoyed a great boost in its popularity over the last few years. Its most active fans are estate agents, who have adopted it as an almost essential term when describing properties they want to sell. There’s no need to cite examples. But I can’t resist this: “Nauro, an island nestled within the Pacific Ocean, has also been labelled the world’s least-visited country” – The Mirror, 14 October 2023.

There are so many reasons to delight in this sentence it’s hard to know where to begin. For a start, it’s a fine specimen of the clutching at extremes that I pointed to recently as characteristic of “clickbait”:  when travel companies have exhausted every holiday resort on the planet, they find an island so remote and obscure that “only around 200 tourists are fortunate enough to discover it each year.”

Next, having found its remote island, it bizarrely switches to estate agent-speak for the right words to describe it. “Nestled” is usually brought into play for a country cottage or a house in a picturesque setting; the sense of a “nest”, of enclosure, clings to the word – is built into it, indeed. This is its full definition in the online (American) dictionary Merriam-Webster: “nestle (verb intransitive): settle or lie comfortably with or against something; to lie in an inconspicuous or sheltered manner; verb transitive: to settle, shelter, or house in or as if in a nest.” That seems clear enough, and there isn’t any distinction between American and British English usage.  

My attention is drawn to another word here, and it’s also something I’d expect an estate agent to use. Just as “nestled” seems to evoke a retired and cosy place, so “within” connotes enclosure, the sense of being snugly contained. A cosy spot might well be found “within” a small space. But here an island is “nestled within” the Pacific Ocean. I’ve noticed “within” being used in this way frequently in the last decade or two, and deduce that it’s another word that’s intended to convey intimacy. It distances itself from the cool pragmatic “in”, and belongs with the ingratiating vocabulary of “management-speak”, where an impersonal body seeks to persuade us that it is caring and interested specifically in ourselves as individuals. It seems to be dotting a considerate “i” and crossing an affectionate “t”.  The shorter word “in” will usually do quite as well, but doesn’t sound so concerned. I much prefer it. 

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