chine

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The top of a ridge.
  2. The spine of an animal.
  3. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
  4. A sharp angle in the cross section of a hull.
  5. A longitudinal line of sharp change in the cross-section profile of the fuselage or similar body.
  6. A hollowed or bevelled channel in the waterway of a ship's deck.
  7. The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.
  8. The back of the blade on a scythe.
verb
  1. To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
  2. To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.
noun
  1. A steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea.
verb
  1. To crack, split, fissure, break.

Pronunciation

/t͡ʃaɪn/ LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-chine.wav

Word forms

chine chines chimb chime chining chined

Etymology

From Middle English chyne, from Old French eschine, from Frankish *skinu, from Proto-Germanic *skinō. Doublet of shin.

Derived words

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.