Nym is a soldier and criminal follower of Sir John Falstaff and a friend and rival of Ancient Pistol.

[1] Nym's extremely curt and disconnected style of speech contrasts with Pistol's expansive bombast, which is full of florid grandiosity and garbled intellectual references.

[2] Nym's laconic and sometime gnomic utterances are explained by the Boy in Henry V as a result of a confused idea that terse speech makes a man seem serious, For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk.

He and Slender switch places with Nym and Pistol, who end up married to Quickly and Doll, as is implied in Henry V.[5] James White's book Falstaff's Letters (1796) purports to be a collection of letters written by Falstaff and his cronies, found in an archive owned by a descendant of Mistress Quickly's sister.

A letter from Pistol to Falstaff says that "the Nym is a pauper vile - I do retort - hath not utterance to woo his dog to bite at badger".