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hinge

Pronunciation: /ˈhɪnd͡ʒ/

The English word “hinge” has 14 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
  2. A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
  3. A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
  4. A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.
  5. The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
  6. One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
  7. A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.
  8. In polyamory, a person connected emotionally or sexually to two others who are not connected to each other.
  9. To be in poor health; to be out of sorts.

verb

  1. To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
  2. To depend on something.
  3. 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.
  4. To bend.
  5. 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.

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.