I'm only guessing that the spelling would be different from 'knee high pantaloons', but recently while watching the BeeB program called "Prime Suspect" I heard the (slang?)term 'nick' for both the police station and the jail... and for the act of arresting a criminal. Is this the *popular verbification process or did the noun come later?
The earliest use I've ever heard for 'nick' (here in the US) is a name for the marks one gets on thier favorite baseball bat when they take it down to the river and hit rocks and pebbles with it.
nick (didn't we discuss this once before, in the distant past?) could be 'to take' -- and it is also used to mean 'to steal'.
(as it does in the song refrain):
Shine your buttons with brasso,
it's only tu'pence a tin,
you can buy it, or nick it from woolworths...
the song is a bawdy ballad, like the american folk song, 'Miss lucy had a steam boat, the steam boat had a bell,..."
i don't think we in US use nick (to take) in the sense of take to jail, but i think that nick to take/steal is used. (or is it just part of my personal lexis?)
there is also nick as in 'nick of time' -- no idea of that nick..
knickers (as knee high pantaloons) is an US meaning.. knickers in UK (perhaps because the first ones were knee high pantaloons) means lady's underpants--panties, as i would be more likely call them--(as in "don't get your knickers in a twist (lady)!")
my first thoughts about nick, is that its something you do when careless with a razor.. or knife. you can nick yourself, or the blade--but then i don't own a baseball bat, and have nver taken one down to the river to hit rocks!
Well, Partridge has this to say about nick the noun:
"(See entry at nias.) 2. The female pudend: low coll.; C. 18-20; ob. Robertson of Struan, who, like G A Stevens, tended to obscenity. --3. Abbr. Old Nick (q.v.), the devil: coll.; 1785 (EDD) --4. Only in nick and froth, q.v. --5. (the nick.) The proper, the fashionable, thing or behavior: ca. 1788-1800. Lord R Seymour in Murray's Magazine, vol. 1, OED. --6. (the nick.) Good physical condition or health; almost always in the nick: late C. 19-20. C J Dennis. --7. See nick, on the, --8. (the nick.) A prison ('Stuart Wood', 1932); a police-station (Charles E Leach, 1933): c. (from 1919). Prob. ex sense 3 of the v., but imm. ex military s. (ca. 1910), the guard-room, detention-cells (F & Gibbons). --9. See nicks."
And the verb:
"To cheat, defraud (of): coll.; late C. 16-20; very ob. Taylor the Water Poet. (OED) --2. To catch, esp. unawares: from ca. 1620. Fletcher & Massiger. In C. 20, occ. to get hold of, as in Galsworthy, The White Monkey, 1924, 'Wait here, darling; I'll nick a rickshaw.' --3. Hence, in C. 19-20, to arrest: low s. or perhaps c. The Spirit of the Public Journals, 1806, 'He ... stands a chance of getting nicked, because he was found in bad company,' OED. --4. To steal; purloin: 1826 (EDD); 1869, Temple Bar, 'I bolted in and nicked a nice silver pot': c > , by 1880, low s. --5. To in-dent a beer can: C. 17-18: either cool. or, more prob., SE So too the vbl.n. --6. To copulate with: low coll.: C 18-20, ob. --7. V.i. to drink heartily: Scots s.; late C. 18-19. Jamieson."
So, it seems the noun came from the verb. And what a lot of meanings for nick.
The use and reuse of "nick" is pretty much normal here. The use of the word to describe both the police station and the cells isn't two different meanings, however, it's just a general term for both. You could say that "Jim got nicked by the Old Bill and charged down at the nick before they banged him up in the cells". But you couldn't say "Jim got nicked by the Old Bill and was charged at the nick and then banged up in the nick".
...at the nick before they banged him up in the cells".
I have an idea of what "banged him up" means in this sentence... mehbe its a description of the sound that the cell door makes when you slam it... but in the US "banging" someone establishes a whole different *relationship.
With the British definition 'up' would be the particle of the phrasal verb 'bang up', with the American definition 'up' would be a prepostion.