gin

Meanings

Noun

• A colourless non-aged alcoholic liquor made by distilling fermented grains such as barley, corn, oats or rye with juniper berries; the base for many cocktails.
• Gin rummy.
• Drawing the best card or combination of cards.
• A trick; a device or instrument.
• A scheme; contrivance; artifice; a figurative trap or snare.
• A snare or trap for game.
• A machine for raising or moving heavy objects, consisting of a tripod formed of poles united at the top, with a windlass, pulleys, ropes, etc.
• A hoisting drum, usually vertical; a whim.
• A pile driver.
• A windpump.
• A cotton gin.
• An instrument of torture worked with screws.
• An Aboriginal woman.

Verb

• To remove the seeds from cotton with a cotton gin.
• To trap something in a gin.
• To begin.

Related

Similar words

• lubra

Origin

• Abbreviation of geneva, alteration of Dutch genever ("juniper") from Old French genevre (French genièvre), from Latin iūniperus ("juniper"). Hence gin rummy (first attested 1941).
• Partly from Middle English gin, ginne, from Old French gin, an aphetism of Old French engin; and partly from Middle English grin, grine, from Old English grin, gryn, giren, geren.
• From Middle English ginnen, contraction of beginnen, from Old English beginnan, from Proto-Germanic *biginnaną.
• Borrowed from Dharug dyin ("woman"), but having acquired a derogatory tone.
• Cognate to Scots gin ("if"): perhaps from given, or a compound in which the first element is from Old English ġif (English if) and the second is cognate to English an ("if") (compare iffen), or perhaps from again.