Other forms: shining, shins, shined
The shin is the hard front edge of your lower leg, between the knee and the ankle. It is the bit you crack against the coffee table in the dark, with no padding on it to soften the blow.
The bone underneath is the shinbone, or the tibia in a doctor's notes. Footballers wear shin pads, and a kick on the shin is the standard football complaint. There is a verb too: to shin up something is to climb it fast using your arms and legs, so you shin up a drainpipe or a tree. At the butcher's, shin of beef is the cut from the lower leg — tough, cheap, and wonderful after three hours in the oven. The word looks like skin and has nothing to do with it.
1nounshinThe front part of the leg between the knee and the ankle.
“He banged his shin on the open drawer.”
synonyms: tibia
2nouncutA cut of beef taken from the lower part of the leg.
“Shin of beef needs three hours in a low oven.”
3verbclimbTo climb something quickly using the hands and legs.
“The boy shinned up the tree to fetch the kite.”
shin is a part of the leg.
Shin came straight down the Germanic line: Old English scinu, Proto-West Germanic *skinu, Proto-Germanic *skinō, with the cousins still in daily use as Dutch scheen and German Schiene. English kept the bone and lost nothing along the way. Despite looking like a near-twin of skin, it has no connection with it at all — different word, different root.
Proto-Germanic
*skinō
Proto-West Germanic
*skinu
Old English
scinu
Middle English
schyne
English, today
shin
From Middle English schyne, from Old English scinu, from Proto-West Germanic skinu, from Proto-Germanic skinō. Cognate with West Frisian skine, Dutch scheen, German Schiene. Not related to skin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA