A friend of mine notes when she has stolen a post by posting ‘Knicked.’ I’ve never seen the slang for ‘stolen’ spelled that way; it’s always ‘nicked’. I pointed this out to her (in a PM), and she says ‘knicked’ is a variant spelling. I asked her for a cite, and she told me to look it up on Oxford English Dictionary online. I don’t have a subscription. However, I have found no other etymologies where it is spelled ‘knick’, except for one (apparently from OED) from 1622 in the phrase ‘to knick a knave’. It sounds like a witty spelling for pairing ‘nick’ with ‘knave’.
Discourse, Why not tell me it’s too late to edit a post before i type
stuff in ? and then when i am forced to cancel, why ask if i really want to save
or cancel when i have no bleedin’ choice ?
Neither form is mentioned in Grose OED (1950-ish, 2 vol) has only Nick (dated 1869, which would explain why Grose doesn’t have it) Partridge - A Concise Dictionary Of Slang has no word spelled Knick; none of the definitions of Nick match the OP. A Dictionary Of The Underworld defines Knick as valuables, noting that it is short for Knick-Knack; and has the expected definition of Nick as to steal (with a cite for 1829 - see you, OED!)
the forms nicke, nycke, knick are in the OED, but it’s not clear to me if they can all apply to the sense in question (yes, “to knick a knave” is there, but was that supposed to be a normal spelling variant even back then?) Even if it was, that does not tell you if is considered correct today. No alternative spelling is listed by the ODE for instance.
