Other forms: hinged, hinges, hinging
A hinge is the joint a door swings on — two flat metal plates and a pin through them, one screwed to the door, one to the frame. A gate has a pair, a laptop has one, and so do your glasses and a jewellery box.
Hinges squeak, seize up and get oiled; a lid can be hinged, and a door can hang off its hinges. As a verb, hinge means to swing on a hinge, but the far commoner use is figurative: everything hinges on the weather, the case hinges on one witness — the whole thing depends on that single point. It takes ON or UPON, always. Unhinged grew out of the same picture, a door swinging free of its hinges, and it now says nothing about doors and everything about a person who has lost control.
1nounhingeA joint that lets a door, lid or gate swing open and shut.
“The gate sagged because one hinge had rusted through.”
2verbdependTo depend entirely on something.
“The whole case hinges on what the neighbour saw that night.”
3verbattachedTo be attached by a hinge, or to swing on one.
“The seat hinges forward to show the storage underneath.”
hinge is a mechanical joint.
Hinge came from Middle English henge through Old English henġ and a West Germanic form behind that, and the family it belongs to is the hanging one — Old English had henġen for the thing something is hung on. The neighbours agree: Dutch heng is the moving leaf of a hinge, and Danish has hængsel.
Proto-West Germanic
*hangiju
Old English
*henġ
Middle English
henge — hinge
English, today
hinge
Built from
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”), stq Hänge (“hinge”), Low German henge (“hook, hinge, handle”), Dutch heng (“moving leaf of a hinge”), Dutch geheng (“hinge”), Middle Dutch henghe (“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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Around the House, A Man Called Ove, Tools & DIY
First appears in chapter 15 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word