• enPR: hĭnj, IPA: /ˈhɪndʒ/

hinge (plural hinges)

1. A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
   • 1826, Mary Shelley, The Last Man, volume 3, chapter 1

     The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement.

2. A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
3. A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
4. A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.

   This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.

5. (statistics) The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
6. One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
   • 1671, John Milton, “Book the Fourth”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: Printed by J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], OCLC 228732398 ↗, page 100 ↗:

     In ruine reconcil'd: nor slept the winds / Within thir stony caves, but rush'd abroad / From the four hinges of the world, and fell

• (device upon which a door hangs) har
• (statistics) quartile

• French: gond, charnière
• German: Angel, Scharnier, Türband
• Italian: cerniera, cardine
• Portuguese: dobradiça
• Russian: пе́тля
• Spanish: bisagra, gozne, charnela, quicio

hinge (hinges, present participle hinging; past and past participle hinged)

1. (transitive) To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
2. (intransitive, with on or upon) To depend on something.
   • 2015, Louise Taylor, Papiss Cissé and Jonny Evans spitting row mars Manchester United’s win over Newcastle (in The Guardian, 4 March 2015)

     Games can hinge on the sort of controversial decision made by Taylor in the 10th minute. After Rivière collected Gabriel Obertan’s pass and sashayed beyond Daley Blind he drew the United centre-half into a rash, clumsy challenge but, puzzlingly, Taylor detected no penalty.

3. (transitive, archaeology) The breaking off of the distal end of a knapped stone flake whose presumed course across the face of the stone core was truncated prematurely, leaving not a feathered distal end but instead the scar of a nearly perpendicular break.

   The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.

4. (obsolete) To bend#Verb|bend.
   • c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act IV, scene iii], page 92 ↗:

     Be thou a Flatterer now, and ſeeke to thriue / By that which ha's{{sic

• Portuguese: pôr dobradiças em, colocar dobradiças em
• Spanish: abisagrar

• French: dépendre, reposer
• German: abhängen
• Portuguese: depender de
• Spanish: depender