Other forms: sinews
A sinew is the tough cord joining muscle to bone. Strain a sinew, sinews of steel, the sinews of war.
It is the everyday word for a tendon, and it appears in meat as the tough bit nobody wants. The sinews of war is an old phrase meaning money, from a Roman saying, and straining every sinew means trying with everything you have.
1nounsinewThe tough cord joining muscle to bone.
“The butcher cut away the fat and sinew before mincing the meat.”
sinew is a body part.
Old English sinu names the tendon, from a Germanic root. Neuron is a distant relative through Greek.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)neh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*snéh₁wr̥ — sinew, tendon
Proto-Germanic
*sinwō
Proto-West Germanic
*sinu
Old English
sinu — tendon, sinew; nerve
Middle English
synwe
English, today
sinew
Built from
From Middle English synwe, synewe (“tendon; ligament or other connective tissue; muscle; nerve; leaf vein”), from Old English sinu (“tendon, sinew; nerve”), from Proto-West Germanic sinu, from Proto-Germanic sinwō, from Proto-Indo-European snéh₁wr̥ (“sinew, tendon”), from (s)neh₁- (“to twist (threads), spin, weave”). The word is cognate with sinnow (“sinew”), Scots senon, sinnon, stq Siene (“sinew”), West Frisian senuw, sine (“sinew; nerve”), Dutch zenuw (“nerve, sinew”), German Sehne (“tendon, sinew; cord”), Icelandic sin (“tendon”), Danish sene (“tendon, sinew”), Swedish sena (“sinew”), ae 𐬯𐬥𐬁𐬎𐬎𐬀𐬭 (“tendon, sinew”), Ancient Greek νεῦρον (“tendon; nerve; cord”), Latin nervus (“tendon, sinew; nerve”), Sanskrit स्नावन् (“sinew, tendon; muscle”), txb ṣñor (“sinew”). a doublet of nerve and neuron.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA