hinge
/ˈhɪnd͡ʒ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms hinges hinging hingeing hinged
- noun A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
- noun A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
- noun A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
- noun A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend. “This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.”
- noun (statistics) The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
- noun One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
- noun A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.
- noun In polyamory, a person connected emotionally or sexually to two others who are not connected to each other.
- verb (transitive) To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
- verb (intransitive, with on or upon) To depend on something.
- verb (transitive, archaeology) 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. “The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.”
- verb (obsolete) To bend.
- verb 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.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
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.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The hook with its eye, or the joint, on which a door, gate, lid, etc., turns or swings; a flexible piece, as a strip of leather, which serves as a joint to turn on. The gate self-opened wide, On golden hinges turning. Milton.
- noun That on which anything turns or depends; a governing principle; a cardinal point or rule; as, this argument was the hinge on which the question turned.
- verb To attach by, or furnish with, hinges.
- verb To bend. [Obs.] Shak.
Etymology [OE. henge, heeng; akin to D. heng, LG. henge, Prov. E. hingle a small hinge; connected with hang, v., and Icel. hengja to hang. See Hang.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “hinge”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details