Noun: hinge
| Singular | hinge |
| Plural | hinges |
Sample Sentences
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The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement. [1826, [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:]
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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. [1862, Charles Darwin, The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects:]
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This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.
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But let me say, with all deference, that these positions do not appear to me to touch the hinge of the argument before us. [1840, Adam Duncan Tait, Remarks on a Pamphlet by the Reverend James Buchanan, page 26:]
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These grown-up children were at that hinge of life when parents must begin to shrink and fold. [2022, Ian McEwan, Lessons, page 388:]
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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 [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:]
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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 [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:]
Nouns inflected like hinge
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
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. See: Middle English Nouns '
henge', Old English Nouns '
*henġe', Old English Nouns '
henġen', Dutch Nouns '
heng', Dutch Nouns '
hengel', Danish Nouns '
hængsel', Icelandic Nouns '
hengsli', Swedish Nouns '
hängsle', Old English Nouns '
hangian'.