chink
pronunciation
How to pronounce chink in British English:
UK [tʃɪŋk]
How to pronounce chink in American English:
US [tʃɪŋk]
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- Noun:
- offensive terms for a person of Chinese descent
- a narrow opening as e.g. between planks in a wall
- a short light metallic sound
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- Verb:
- make or emit a high sound
- fill the chinks of, as with caulking
- make cracks or chinks in
Word Origin
- chink
- chink: English has three words chink. The one denoting the sharp metallic sound [16] is purely onomatopoeic. The one meaning ‘small hole’ [16] is something of a mystery, but it may be an alteration of chine ‘fissure’ [14] (best known today as the term for a coastal ravine in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight), which came from Old English cinu. Chink as a demeaning term for a Chinese person [19] is a facetious formation based on China or Chinese.
- chink (n.1)
- "a split, crack," 1530s, with parasitic -k + Middle English chine (and replacing this word) "fissure, narrow valley," from Old English cinu, cine "fissure," related to cinan "to crack, split, gape," common Germanic (compare Old Saxon and Old High German kinan, Gothic uskeinan, German keimen "to germinate;" Middle Dutch kene, Old Saxon kin, German Keim "germ;" ), from PIE root *geie- "to sprout, split open." The connection being in the notion of bursting open.
- chink (n.2)
- "a Chinaman," 1901, derogatory, perhaps derived somehow from China, or else from chink (n.1) with reference to eye shape.
- chink (n.3)
- "sharp sound" (especially of coin), 1580s, probably imitative. As a verb from 1580s. Related: Chinked; chinking.
Example
- 1. But there is a chink in this argument .
- 2. There is a chink in the cag 's constitutional armour , though .
- 3. If that is true , then is this a sign that the once mighty relational database finally has a chink in its armor ?
- 4. Modern physicists , aware of the hubris of their 19th-century predecessors , have never thought their subject closed . But nor have they found a chink in the armour of relativity that they could use to prise the whole thing open .