?a1425 tr. Guy de Chauliac Grande Chirurgie (N.Y. Acad. Med.) f. 47 (MED) The bak is..a talwy or a fleschy place byhynde..ordeyned of manye and dyuerse linkes yche after oþer to defende þe nuke.

?1541 R. Copland Guy de Chauliac's Questyonary Cyrurgyens ii. sig. Div^v Holes..by the whiche descendeth the nuke of the brayne..tyll vnto the ende of the backe.

1543 B. Traheron tr. J. de Vigo Most Excellent Wks. Chirurg. i. i. f. 2/1 The Nuke, whyche is the mary in the backe bone.

1547 A. Borde Breuiary of Helthe i. f. Cxxxvi^v The synewes doth procede from the newke which is the mary of the backe.

1562 W. Bullein Dial. Sorenes , in Bulwarke of Defence Cold is an enemie to the..braine, and nuke of the necke.

1588 J. Read tr. F. Arcaeus Compend. Method ii. vi. f. 51^v Ye hinder part of ye neck, above the nuke.

1611 R. Cotgrave Dict. French & Eng. Tongues Os basilaire, the Nape, or Nuke-bone.

1634 T. Johnson tr. A. Paré Chirurg. Wks. iii. i. 87 The backe part of the necke,..and the nuke or nape.

1659 J. Howell Vocab. §1. sig. Aaaaaa2 The nook of the neck; la nucca.

1676 R. Wiseman Severall Chirurg. Treat. iv. iv. 282 Those on the left side were then swelled from the Nuke down that side of the Neck.

1843 H. Ainsworth Windsor Castle iv. vi The head of the hart..from the extremity of the under-lip to the nuke.

1955 Bull. Atomic Sc. Feb. 58 Strategic bombing with thermonukes may no longer be a valid military solution.]

1958 Time 27 Jan. 21 A mid-air accident in which the accident-proofed ‘nuc’ was jettisoned safely without explosion.

1964 Daily Mirror 24 Aug. 4/5 The generals should be allowed to decide whether to use tactical nuclear weapons, or as the current ugly phrase has it: ‘Where and when to put in the nooks.’

1973 Publishers Weekly 14 May 44/1 They hijack a liner at sea and sink it with a baby nuke... He is given the job of detonating the big nuke.

1985 T. O'Brien Nucl. Age ii. 29 I suddenly didn't give a damn about fallout or nukes.

2000 TVQuick 13 May 56/3 A pair of government agents on the trail of a stolen nuke that threatens to obliterate Manhattan.

1960 Time 4 July 52/1 But the nuclear submarines—called ‘nukes’—can cruise underwater for weeks at top speed.

1977 Navy News 21 June (heading) Americans send ‘nukes’.

1986 N.Z. Listener 15 Feb. 21/3 It would be naive to expect the US to abandon its no-disclosure policy or to expect New Zealand to welcome ‘nukes’ into its harbours.

1964 USS Long Beach 33 Engineering Department personnel are known as ‘snipes’ in the Navy, while those who have qualified in nuclear power are referred to as ‘Nukes’.

1971 J. Ball First Team (1972) xv. 224 ‘What is nukes?’ the man asked. ‘Nuclear specialists; no one else can handle this stuff.’

1984 T. Clancy Hunt for Red October 89 These guys are working sailors, nucs.

1998 S. Sontag et al. Blind Man's Bluff x. 228 The nukes, those men who worked the reactor, came running.

1969 Business Week 20 Sept. 52 More than 100 nuclear plants are scheduled..despite some picketing and..reprints of a Life magazine article questioning the safety of ‘nukes’.

1976 Conservation News Sept. 7 Should we go for a low-energy future—no more nukes?

a1988 C. Adams More Straight Dope 91 Sayonara OPEC, and toodaloo to nukes.

1976 Austin (Texas) Amer.-Statesman 23 Sept. a4/2 (heading) Britain warned about nuke use.

1985 M. Ivins in Nation 23 Nov. 546/2 Suddenly from out of the nuke factory come two black four-wheel-drive vehicles.

1994 Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey) 20 Nov. i. 14/4 (heading) Nuke foes block tracks in Germany.

1962 in J. C. Pratt Vietnam Voices 121 No one's going to nuke Nam.

1972 Japan Times Weekly 23 Dec. 4/2 I asked how he could be sure that the Soviet Union would nuke us if we nuked China.

1984 M. Amis Money 38 Don't pussyfoot, don't wait for the war to escalate. Nuke them, right off.

1994 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 11 Aug. 32 (advt.) Vladimir Zhirinovsky won twenty-four percent of Russia's popular vote on a platform that included reclaiming Alaska and ‘nuking’ Japan.

1967 Current Slang 2 iii. (Gloss. U.S. Air Force Academy slang) 5 Nuke, to get revenge in a ‘big’ way.

1982 Time 8 Nov. 91/2 High school students say, ‘That English test really nuked me.’

1990 New Musical Express 13 Jan. 15/5 Nuke your record company! They are out to destroy you!

1994 Harrowsmith Apr. 38 It is the type of neighbourhood where lawn-care companies have traditionally fertilized the lawns four times a year and nuked the weeds.

1984 Campus Slang in J. E. Lighter Hist. Dict. Amer. Slang (1997) II. 686/1 Nuke, cook something in a microwave oven: Nuke it—it'll only take a couple of minutes.

1988 Times 17 Aug. 10/1 He was down in radiotherapy before anyone could stop him. ‘Nuke me till I glow!’ he is said to have dared the technicians.

1993 Equinox (Camden East, Ont.) June 33/4 ‘This microwave can deliver energy to tissues more effectively than infrared lamps’... Naturally, there have been jokes about nuking your pigs and so on.

1997 Esquire July 29/1 She nukes some fish sticks and slaps in a Thomas the Tank Engine video to occupy little Ruby.

1987 Times 24 Apr. 19/2 Rambo's lesson that the only good Red is a nuked Red.

1996 Focus Apr. 64/3 That's not to say we won't wake up to a nuked planet tomorrow.