hinge
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: hĭnj
ipa: /ˈhɪnd͡ʒ/
rhymes: -ɪndʒ
Forms: form: hinges
Etymology: From Middle English henge, from Old English *henġ (“hinge”), compare Old English henġe- in henġeclif (“overhanging cliff”), Old English henġen (“hanging; that upon which a thing is hung”), from Proto-West Germanic *hangiju. Akin to Scots heenge (“hinge”), Saterland Frisian Hänge (“hinge”), Dutch heng (“door handle”), Low German henge (“a hook, hinge, handle”), Middle Dutch henghe, hanghe (“a hook, hinge, handle”), Scots hingel (“any attachment by which something is hung or fastened”), Dutch hengel (“hook”), geheng (“hinge”), hengsel (“handle”), Danish hængsel (“hinge”), dialectal German Hängel (“hook, joint”), German Henkel (“handle, hook”), Old English hōn (“to hang”), hangian (“to cause to hang, hang up”). More at hang.
Senses: examples: text: The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement.
ref: 1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:
glosses: A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
examples: text: The pedicel of the pollinium is articulated as before by a hinge to the disc; it can move freely only in one direction owing to one end of the disc being upturned.
ref: 1862, Charles Darwin, The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects:
glosses: A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
glosses: A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
examples: text: This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.
text: But let me say, with all deference, that these positions do not appear to me to touch the hinge of the argument before us.
ref: 1840, Adam Duncan Tait, Remarks on a Pamphlet by the Reverend James Buchanan, page 26:
text: These grown-up children were at that hinge of life when parents must begin to shrink and fold.
ref: 2022, Ian McEwan, Lessons, page 388:
glosses: A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.
topics: mathematics
sciences
statistics
glosses: The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
examples: text: If when the Moon is in the Hinge at East, / The Birth breaks forward from its native rest; / Full Eighty Years, if you two Years abate, / This Station gives, and long defers its Fate
ref: 1697, Thomas Creech, The five books of Mr. Manilius containing a system of the ancient astronomy and astrology: together with the philosophy of the Stoicks, page 121:
text: In ruine reconcil'd: nor slept the winds / Within thir stony caves, but rush'd abroad / From the four hinges of the world, and fell
ref: 1671, John Milton, “The Fourth Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 100:
glosses: One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
glosses: A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.
synonyms: swing
glosses: In polyamory, a person connected emotionally or sexually to two others who are not connected to each other.
glosses: To be in poor health; to be out of sorts.
Synonyms: sense: device upon which a door hangs
word: har
topics: statistics
mathematics
sciences
word: quartile
Meronyms: sense: device upon which a door hangs
word: pintel
Derived terms: alpha hinge
butt hinge
delta hinge
door hinge
flapping hinge
H hinge
hingeable
hingeback
hinge-back tortoise
hinge joint
hingeless
hingelike
hinge line
hingeline
hinge of Africa
hinge on
hinger
hinge termination
hingewise
jonbar hinge
living hinge
lower hinge
midhinge
off one's hinge
rehinge
unhinge
upper hinge