/ˈhɪnd͡ʒ/
OriginFrom 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”), 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”), German Henkel (“handle, hook”), Danish hængsel (“hinge”), Faroese hongsl (“hinge”), Icelandic hengsli (“hinge”), Norwegian hengsel (“hinge”), Swedish hängsle (“suspender”), Old English hōn (“to hang”), hangian (“to cause to hang, hang up”). More at hang.
- A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
“The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement.”
- A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
“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.”
- A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
- A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.
“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.”
- The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
- One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
“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”
- A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.
- In polyamory, a person connected emotionally or sexually to two others who are not connected to each other.
- dialectalTo be in poor health; to be out of sorts.
- transitiveTo attach by, or equip with a hinge.
- intransitiveTo depend on something.
“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 i”
- transitiveThe 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.
“The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.”
- obsoleteTo bend.
“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: [...]”
- 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.
Formshinges(plural) · hinges(present, singular, third-person) · hinging(participle, present) · hingeing(participle, present, uncommon) · hinged(participle, past) · hinged(past) · Hinges(plural)