hinge

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.

• enPR: hĭnj, IPA^(key): /ˈhɪnd͡ʒ/

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• Rhymes: -ɪndʒ

hinge (plural hinges)

1. A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
   • 1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:

     The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement.

2. A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
   • 1862, Charles Darwin, The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects:

     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.

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.

   This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.

   • 1840, Adam Duncan Tait, Remarks on a Pamphlet by the Reverend James Buchanan, page 26:

     But let me say, with all deference, that these positions do not appear to me to touch the hinge of the argument before us.

   • 2022, Ian McEwan, Lessons, page 388:

     These grown-up children were at that hinge of life when parents must begin to shrink and fold.

5. (statistics) 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.
   • 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:

     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

   • 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:

     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

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.

   Synonym: swing

• (device upon which a door hangs): har
• (statistics): quartile

• (device upon which a door hangs): pintel

hinge (third-person singular simple present hinges, present participle hinging or hingeing, simple past and past participle hinged)

1. (transitive) To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
2. (Should we move, merge or split⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (intransitive, with on or upon) To depend on something.
   • 2015 March 4, Louise Taylor, The Guardian‎^[1]:

     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.

3. (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.

4. (obsolete) To bend.
   • c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii], page 92:

     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: [...]

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.

   Synonym: swing

• ehing, neigh

hinge

1. (dated or formal) singular past subjunctive of hangen

hinge

1. genitive singular of hing
2. partitive singular of hing
3. illative singular of hing

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hinge

1. first/third-person singular subjunctive II of hängen

hinge

1. first/third-person singular past subjunctive of hangen

hinge

1. Alternative form of henge