chine

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The backbone or spine, especially of an animal.
2. n. A cut of meat containing part of the backbone.
3. n. A ridge or crest.
4. n. Nautical The line of intersection between the side and bottom of a flatbottom or V-bottom boat.
5. v. To cut (a carcass, for example) through the spine, as when butchering.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To split open; crack; chink; chap.
2. To split; crack; burst; lay open.
3. n. A crack; chink; rift; cleft; crevice; fissure.
4. n. A ravine or large fissure in a cliff: a term especially common in the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, England: as, Black-gang chine.
5. n. The backbone or spine: now commonly used only of an animal.
6. n. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
7. n. Figuratively, a ridge of land.
8. To cut through the backbone or into chine-pieces.
9. n. An erroneous form for chime (of a cask).
10. n. A part of a ship. See chime, 2.
11. Literally, colored in Chinese fashion: applied to fabrics in which the warp is dyed in different colors, so that a mottled effect is produced, or in which a double thread, formed of two smaller threads of different colors twisted together, is used to produce a similar mottled or speckled appearance. Figured chiné silks have a plain ground, but the flowers and bouquets forming the pattern have an indistinct and cloudy appearance, produced by the breaking of minute particles of color into one another.

Wiktionary

1. n. The top of a ridge.
2. n. The spine of an animal.
3. n. nautical a sharp angle in the cross section of a hull
4. v. transitive To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
5. v. To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.
6. n. Southern England a steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Prov. Eng. A chink or cleft; a narrow and deep ravine.
2. n. The backbone or spine of an animal; the back.
3. n. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking. [See Illust. of Beef.]
4. n. The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.
5. v. To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
6. v. Too chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine..

WordNet 3.0

1. n. backbone of an animal
2. n. cut of meat or fish including at least part of the backbone
3. v. cut through the backbone of an animal