hinge
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: archaeology
history
human-sciences
mathematics
sciences
statistics
Etymology: From Middle English henge (“hinge”), from Old English *henġ or *henġe (“hinge”), from Proto-West Germanic *hangiju or *hangī; compare Old English *henġe- in henġeclif (“overhanging cliff”), Old English henġen (“hanging; that upon which a thing is hung”). Akin to Scots heenge (“hinge”), Saterland Frisian Hänge (“hinge”), Low German henge (“hook, hinge, handle”), Dutch heng (“moving leaf of a hinge”), Dutch geheng (“hinge”), Middle Dutch henghe, hanghe (“hook, hinge, handle”), Scots hingel (“any attachment by which something is hung or fastened”), Dutch hengel (“hook”), hengsel (“handle”), dialectal German Hängel (“hook, joint”), Henkel (“handle, hook”), Danish hængsel (“hinge”), Faroese hongsl (“hinge”), Icelandic hengsli (“hinge”), Norwegian hengsel (“hinge”), Swedish hängsle (“suspender”), Old English hōn (“to hang”), Old English hangian (“to cause to hang, hang up”). More at hang.
Inflected forms:
form: hinges
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: hinges
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: hinging
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: hingeing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
uncommon
form: hinged
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: hinged
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
pos: noun
examples: The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement.
gloss: A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
pos: noun
gloss: A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.
pos: noun
examples: This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.
But let me say, with all deference, that these positions do not appear to me to touch the hinge of the argument before us.
These grown-up children were at that hinge of life when parents must begin to shrink and fold.
gloss: The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
pos: noun
gloss: One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
pos: noun
examples: 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
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
gloss: A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.
pos: noun
gloss: In polyamory, a person connected emotionally or sexually to two others who are not connected to each other.
pos: noun
gloss: To be in poor health; to be out of sorts.
pos: noun
tags: dialectal
gloss: To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To depend on something.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Games can hinge on the sort of controversial decision made by Taylor in the 10th minute. After Rivière collected Gabriel Obertan’s pass and sashayed beyond Daley Blind he drew the United centre-half into a rash, clumsy challenge but, puzzlingly, Taylor detected no penalty.
gloss: The breaking off of the distal end of a knapped stone flake whose presumed course across the face of the stone core was truncated prematurely, leaving not a feathered distal end but instead the scar of a nearly perpendicular break.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.
gloss: To bend.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
examples: Be thou a Flatterer now, and ſeeke to thriue / By that which ha's^([sic – meaning has]) vndone thee; hindge thy knee, / And let his very breath whom thou'lt obſerue / Blow off thy Cap: [...]
gloss: To move or already be positioned in such a fashion that it presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.
pos: verb
Synonyms: quartile
Derived words: 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
hinge upon
hingey
Translations: