Noun: in
Sample Sentences
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His parents got him an in with the company.
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Holleran's and White's diminishing capacities as writers does not affect their publishing ins': the writer the house knows is always better than the writer the house doesn't know. [1987 February 1, T. R. Witomski, “Zeitgeist or Poltergeist? Why Gay Books Are So Bad”, in Gay Community News, volume 14, number 28, page 9:]
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This memoir has nothing to do with the question between the ins and the outs; it is intended neither to support nor to assail the administration; it is general in its views upon a general and national subject; […] [1827, Benjamin Chew, A Sketch of the Politics, Relations, and Statistics, of the Western World, page 192:]
Nouns inflected like in
whiting,
Munduruku,
Mundurucu,
sempai,
senpai,
saseng,
satang,
cunjevoi,
sansei,
Namboothiri,
somoni,
Sentinelese,
siopao,
shogun,
shinza,
Barakzai,
Chippewyan,
Diaguita,
shōgun,
thermal horsepower, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. PIE word
2. *h₁en
3. Preposition and verb from Middle English in, from Old English in, from Proto-Germanic *in.
4. Adverb, noun and adjective from Middle English in, from Old English inn and inne, from Proto-Germanic *innai.
5. Sense 1/2 "in"/"into" are from the original PIE prefix, with locative/accusative case respectively. Sense 3/4 "qualification"/"means" are from the PIE metaphor of all infinitives coming from locatives. See: Middle English Nouns '
in', Middle English Nouns '
in'.