Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. See gorse.
- n. A whinstone.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A plant of the genus Ulex, the furze or gorse, chiefly U. Europæus and U. nanus. See furze,1, and cut under Ulex.
- n. Same as rest-harrow, 1.
- n. A name given in the north of England and in Wales to various rocks, chiefly to basalt, but also to any unusually hard quartzose sandstone. The latter is sometimes called white or gray whin, the basalt blue whin. See whin-sill.
- n. An erroneous form of whim, 3.
- n. Same as wheen.
Wiktionary
- n. Gorse; furze.
- n. The plant woad-waxen.
- n. whinstone
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Gorse; furze. See Furze.
- n. Woad-waxed.
- n. Prov. Eng. Same as Whinstone.
WordNet 3.0
- n. very spiny and dense evergreen shrub with fragrant golden-yellow flowers; common throughout western Europe
- n. any of various hard colored rocks (especially rocks consisting of chert or basalt)
- n. small Eurasian shrub having clusters of yellow flowers that yield a dye; common as a weed in Britain and the United States; sometimes grown as an ornamental
Etymologies
- From Middle English whynne, from Old Norse hvein ("gorse, furze") (compare Norwegian kvein ("bent grass"), Swedish ven ("bent grass"), dialectal hven ("swamp")). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English whinne, probably of Scandinavian origin.Middle English quin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“What th 'Czar whispered to th' Imp'ror Willum whin they were alone, how to make a silk hat out iv a wire matthress, how to settle th 'coal sthrike, who to marry, how to get on with ye'er wife whin ye're married, what to feed th' babies, what doctor to call whin ye've fed thim as directed, -- all iv that ye'll find in th 'pa-apers.”
“You'll git a good chance at the stag whin he tops the hillock forenent you, sor," remarked the somewhat garrulous Irishman.”
“a seam of coal about six inches thick of no value, which lies under about four fathom of clay, beneath this is a white freestone, then a hard stone, which the workmen there call a whin, then two fathoms of clay, then another white stone, and under that a vein of coals three feet nine inches thick, of a similar nature to the Newcastle coal.”
The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation
“E-vasion I calls it, bekaze, exceptin 'whin 'tis right an' natural an 'proper, 'tis wrong an' dhirty to steal a man's wan child, she not knowin 'her own mind.”
“E-vasion I calls it, bekaze, exceptin 'whin 'tis right an' natural an 'proper, 'tis wrong an' dhirty to steal a man's wan child she not knowin 'her own mind.”
“An 'have ye niver drifted along, the water clear as glass, whin suddin, belike a cloud over the sun, the mushy-ice comes bubblin' up an 'up till from bank to bank an' bind to bind it's drapin 'the river like a first snowfall?”
“But ye did in the ind, "he exclaimed, triumphantly," whin ye saw I was goin 'to lave ye for sure.”
“That's the reason why she continue telling them – b/c she will whin, stump and call it sexism if anyone challenge her on anything.”
“The folklore of golf, for another example, tells us that the game began on the links of the Scottish coast, the happy accident of their whin-and-sand-and-cliffsideturf variousness.”
“A dark sandy bowl in the roots beneath the elder and whin bushes, it was a perfect hiding place.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘whin’.
-
See cut under
A list of words with definitions directing us to "see cut under" (or "see cut at") another definition (with hilarity occasionally ensuing).
Compare compare-cut-under.spider, scorpion, spoonbill, spur, tooth, feather, gnat, beard, gyrate, astragal, jog, countercheck and 92 more...
-
phrontistery-w
from phrontistery.info
wack, wadmal, waftage, wafture, wagonette, wagtail, wainage, wainscot, wair, waits, wakerife, waldflute and 282 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
Unusual words for Words With Friends
A list of words that WWF recognizes as valid - most are unusual words; some are simply high-scoring.
botel, slipe, jeu, chub, chubs, cote, mure, tittle, dev, loo, hoke, helo and 357 more...
-
Lively Words
quick, quicksilver, cwic, quitch grass, cwice, vivify, viviparous, viper, weever, wyvern, viand, victual and 148 more...
-
Flora
fenugreek, verbena, saxifrage, arbutus, calendula, nasturtium, lobelia, hellebore, rhododendron, philodendron, bellflower, heuchera and 449 more...
-
And another
retrocausality, brusque, gainsay, cheerio, jaundiced, chamois, caw, craw, fudge, bubbler, shebang, bolo and 244 more...
-
looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
-
Rogue's Words for bonnie lads n lassies
tinchel, glen, sassenach, guddle, brae, bonnie, eejit, deerhound, hoonds, lassie, laddie, heiland and 188 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for whin.
bilby The examples show dialectical uses equivalent to those of modern (standard) English when. This usage as a variant of when is not described in any of the definitions. Which I read, despite being totally distracted by woad-waxed. Jul 10, 2012