winch

UK/wɪnt͡ʃ/US/wɪnt͡ʃ/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,286 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: winches

A winch is a drum that hauls a cable in under power. Use the winch, a hand winch, winch it up.

The danger is the cable rather than the load: a wire under tension that parts whips back with enough force to kill, which is why a blanket is laid over it and why nobody should stand in line with it. A capstan is the same idea with a vertical drum.

Definitions of winch

1nounwinchA drum that hauls a cable in under power.B2+
“They used a winch to pull the car out of the ditch.”

winch is a machine.

Where it comes from

Old English wince comes from a Germanic root meaning to bend or wind. Wink is a distant relative.

Proto-Indo-European
*weng- — to bow, bend, arch, curve
Proto-Germanic
*winkijǭ
Old English
winċe
Middle English
wynche
English, today
winch

From Middle English wynche, from Old English winċe, from Proto-Germanic winkijǭ, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European weng- (“to bow, bend, arch, curve”), whence also wink.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Tools & DIY, Emergency & Rescue

Practise this word

winch in the wild

The windlass is a type of horizontal winch used to move heavy weights, featuring a cylinder (barrel) operated by a crank to wind a rope.
Windlass
Despite this, sailboat capstans are most often referred to as winches.
Winch
The rope may be stored on the winch.
Winch
For example, in off-roading, a fairlead is used to guide the winch cable and remove lateral strain from the winch.
Fairlead
The winch was added to the Victorian Heritage Register on 17 June 1999 in recognition of its historical and scientific significance.
Washington Winch, East Gippsland

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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