English
pinch
Etymology

From Middle English pinchen, from fro-nor *pinchier (compare Old French pincier, pincer), a word of uncertain origin, possibly from Vulgar Latin *pincio, from a merger of *punctiāre, from Latin punctiō and *piccāre, from Frankish *pikkōn, from Proto-Germanic *pikkōną.

Pronunciation
  • IPA: /pɪnt͡ʃ/
Verb

pinch (pinches, present participle pinching; simple past and past participle pinched)

  1. To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
    The children were scolded for pinching each other.
    This shoe pinches my foot.
  2. To squeeze between the thumb and forefinger.
  3. To squeeze between two objects.
  4. (intransitive) Of clothing, to be uncomfortably tight in specific spots.
  5. (slang, transitive) To steal, usually something inconsequential.
    Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
    • 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 3, in The Crying of Lot 49, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC ↗, page 37 ↗:
      “Hey, blokes,” yelled Dean or perhaps Serge, “let's pinch a boat.”
  6. (slang, transitive) To arrest or capture.
  7. (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
  8. (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
  9. (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
  10. (obsolete, intransitive) To be stingy or covetous; to live sparingly.
    • c. 1386–1390, John Gower, edited by Reinhold Pauli, Confessio Amantis of John Gower: Edited and Collated with the Best Manuscripts, volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Bell and Daldy […], published 1857, →OCLC ↗:
      There was with him none other fare,
      But for to pinche and for to spare
      (please add an English translation of this quotation)
    • 1788, Benjamin Franklin (attributed), Paper
      the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare
  11. (of animals) To seize; to grip; to bite.
    • 1614–1615, Homer, “(please specify the book number)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer's Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, →OCLC ↗; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume (please specify the book number), London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, →OCLC ↗:
      He [the hound] pinch'd and pull'd her down.
      The spelling has been modernized.
  12. (figurative) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.
    to be pinched for money
    • c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act II, scene i]:
      Camillo was his helpe in this, his Pandar:
      There is a Plot against my Life, my Crowne;
      All's true that is mistrusted: that false Villaine,
      Whom I employ'd, was pre-employ'd by him:
      He ha's discouer'd my Designe, and I
      Remaine a pinch'd Thing;
    • c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War:
      want of room […] which pincheth the whole nation
    • 1888, William Morris, Signs of Change […] ‎, London: Reeves and Turner, page 105 ↗:
      […] the well-to-do working men did not hope, since they were not pinched and had no means of learning their degraded position […]
    • 1902, William James, “Lecture 2”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC ↗:
      The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.
  13. To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
  14. (obsolete) To complain or find fault.
    • 1809, Alexander Chalmers ed. The Works of the English Poets, from Cahucer to Cowper, Vol. 1, modern rendering of poem imputed to Geoffrey Chaucer, "A Ballad which Chaucer made in Praise or rather Dispraise of Women for their Doubleness":
      Therefore who so them accuse
      Of any double entencion,
      To speake, rowne, other to muse,
      To pinch at their condicion,
      All is but false collusion,
      I dare rightwell the sothe express,
      They have no better protection,
      But shrowd them vnder doubleness.
Translations Translations Translations Noun

pinch (plural pinches)

  1. The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
  2. A close compression of anything with the fingers.
    I gave the leather of the sofa a pinch, gauging the texture.
  3. A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
    Mix about four cups of white flour with a pinch of salt.
  4. An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
    • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC ↗; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene i ↗:
      And wel his merits ſhew him to be made
      His Fortunes maiſter, and the king of men.
      That could perſwade at ſuch a ſodaine pinch,
      With reaſons of his valour and his life,
      A thouſand ſworne and ouer-matching foes:
  5. A metal bar used as a lever for lifting weights, rolling wheels, etc.
  6. An organic herbal smoke additive.
  7. (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
  8. The narrow part connecting the two bulbs of an hourglass.
    • 2001, Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time:
      It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.
  9. (slang) An arrest.
Translations Translations Translations

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