in the nick of time

1. 1.

   at the last possible moment

   “she was saved in the nick of time”

   Synonymsjust in time

Questions about in the nick of time

What does in the nick of time mean?

in the nick of time means "at the last possible moment".

What is another word for in the nick of time?

Close synonyms include just in time. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is in the nick of time a common word?

in the nick of time is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.