chine

• IPA^(key): /t͡ʃaɪn/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪn

From Middle English chyne, from Old French eschine, from Frankish *skinu, from Proto-Germanic *skinō. Doublet of shin.

• chimb, chime

chine (plural chines)

1. The top of a ridge.
2. The spine of an animal.
   • 1717, John Dryden [et al.], “(please specify |book=I to XV)”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     And chine with rising bristles roughly spread.

   • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC:

     […] the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard […]

   • 1942, “Erato”, in George Rawlinson, transl., The Persian Wars‎^[1], translation of original by Herodotus:

     The prerogatives which the Spartans have allowed their kings are the following. In the first place, two priesthoods, those (namely) of Lacedaemonian and of Celestial Jupiter; […] and of having a hundred picked men for their body guard while with the army; likewise the liberty of sacrificing as many cattle in their expeditions as it seems them good, and the right of having the skins and the chines of the slaughtered animals for their own use.

3. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
4. (nautical) A sharp angle in the cross section of a hull.
5. (aeronautics) A longitudinal line of sharp change in the cross-section profile of the fuselage or similar body.
6. (nautical) A hollowed or bevelled channel in the waterway of a ship's deck.
7. The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.
8. The back of the blade on a scythe.

chine (third-person singular simple present chines, present participle chining, simple past and past participle chined)

1. (transitive) To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
2. To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.

From Middle English chyne, chynne (“crack, fissure, chasm”), from Old English ċine, ċinu, from Proto-Germanic *kinō.

chine (plural chines)

1. (Southern England, Vancouver) A steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea.
   • 1885, Jean Ingelow, A Cottage in a Chine:

     The cottage in a chine, we were not to behold it.

   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 169:

     In the odorous stillness of the day I thought of the tracks that threaded Egdon Heath, and of benign, elderly Sandbourne, with its chines and sheltered beach-huts.

• chine
• chink

From Middle English chynen (“to crack, fissure, split”), from Old English ċīnan (“to break into pieces, burst, crack”), from Proto-West Germanic *kīnan, from Proto-Germanic *kīnaną (“to split; crack; germinate; sprout”).

chine (third-person singular simple present chines, present participle chining, simple past and past participle chined)

1. (obsolete) To crack, split, fissure, break. [9th–16th c.]

   The wayward son did chine his father's heart.

   A drought had caused the earth to chine and cranny.

   • 1508, John Fisher, Treatise concernynge ... the seven penytencyall Psalms:

     After the erth be brent, chyned & chypped by the hete of the sonne.

• chine

• An historical dictionary

• Chien, niche

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -in

chine

1. inflection of chiner:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• chien, niche, niché

• IPA^(key): [ˈçɪnʲə]

chine m

1. Lenited form of cine.

chine f pl

1. feminine plural of chino

chine f pl

1. plural of china

chine

1. Alternative form of chyne (“crack”)

chine

1. Alternative form of chyne (“spine”)

chine

1. Alternative form of chynen

chine m pl

1. masculine plural of chino