hinge

Meanings

Noun

• A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
• A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
• A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
• A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.
• The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
• One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.

Verb

• To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
• To depend on something.
• 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.
• To bend.

Related

Similar words

• har
• quartile

Origin

• From Middle English henge, from Old English *henġ ("hinge"), compare Old English henġe- in henġeclif, Old English henġen, possibly from Proto-Germanic *hangaz, *hangiz. Akin to Scots heenge, Saterland Frisian Hänge ("hinge"), Dutch heng, Low German henge ("a hook, hinge, handle"), Middle Dutch henghe ("a hook, hinge, handle"), Scots hingel, Dutch hengel ("hook"), geheng, hengsel, dialectal German Hängel ("hook, joint"), German Henkel ("handle, hook"), Old English hōn ("to hang"), hangian. More at hang.