Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A slight, metallic sound, as of coins rattling in a pocket.
  • intransitive & transitive verb To make or cause to make a slight, metallic sound.
  • noun A narrow opening, such as a crack or fissure.
  • transitive verb To make narrow openings in.
  • transitive verb To fill narrow openings in.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A crack; a cleft, rent, or fissure of greater length than breadth; a gap: as, the chinks of a wall.
  • noun A sprain of the back.
  • To make a fine sharp sound, as that produced by the collision of small pieces of metal.
  • To cause to emit a sharp, clear metallic sound, as by shaking coins together.
  • noun An obsolete form of chinch.
  • To crack; split; gape.
  • To cause to open or part and form a fissure; make chinks in.
  • To fill up chinks in: as, to chink a wall or a pavement.
  • To put into a chink or chinks: as, to chink in mortar.
  • noun A short, sharp, clear metallic sound.
  • noun Coin: so called from its metallic ring.
  • noun A fit, as of coughing or laughing.
  • noun A Chinaman.
  • noun The chaffinch, Fringilla Cœlebs.
  • noun The reed-bunting, Emberiza schæniculus.
  • noun The variegated pattern shown by oak and other woods when cut across the grain.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A small cleft, rent, or fissure, of greater length than breadth; a gap or crack.
  • intransitive verb To crack; to open.
  • noun slang a chinaman; a chinese person; -- disparaging and offensive.
  • intransitive verb To make a slight, sharp, metallic sound, as by the collision of little pieces of money, or other small sonorous bodies.
  • transitive verb To cause to open in cracks or fissures.
  • transitive verb To fill up the chinks of.
  • transitive verb To cause to make a sharp metallic sound, as coins, small pieces of metal, etc., by bringing them into collision with each other.
  • noun A short, sharp sound, as of metal struck with a slight degree of violence.
  • noun Cant Money; cash.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A slight sound as of metal objects touching each other.
  • noun colloquial Ready money, especially in the form of coins.
  • verb To make a slight sound like that of metal objects touching.
  • noun A narrow opening such as a fissure or crack.
  • noun A chip or dent (in something metallic).
  • noun A vulnerability or flaw in a protection system or in any otherwise formidable system, idiomatically derived from the phrase "chink in armor".
  • noun slang coin or ready cash (1565-75)
  • verb To fill an opening such as the space between logs in a log house with chinking; to caulk.
  • noun Alternative form of Chink.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make cracks or chinks in
  • noun a short light metallic sound
  • noun (ethnic slur) offensive term for a person of Chinese descent
  • verb fill the chinks of, as with caulking
  • noun a narrow opening as e.g. between planks in a wall
  • verb make or emit a high sound

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Imitative.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably alteration of obsolete chine, from Middle English, crack, from Old English cine.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Onomatopoeic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Of uncertain origin; apparently a re-formation of chine.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word chink.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.