To cut a piece of metal out of the edge of an axe This nick, usually V-shaped, renders the axe useless The damage is usually caused by striking a hidden knot, less than being due to clumsy handling
Occurrence of an interval containing no data, caused by the fact that the probability model generating the data assigns a probability of 0 to the interval For example, a study of tall and short men might randomly sample only men shorter than 5'6" and men taller than 6'0"
Administrative policy where the college's financial aid award does not fully meet a family's demonstrated financial need Such a "gap" can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars