chine

• IPA^(key): /tʃaɪn/
• Rhymes: -aɪn

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

chine (plural chines)

1. The top of a ridge.
2. The spine of an animal.
   • Dryden

     And chine with rising bristles roughly spread.

   • 1883: Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

     […] the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard […]

   • 1942, George Rawlinson, transl., “Erato”, in The Persian Wars‎, translation of original by Herodotus:

     The prerogatives which the Spartans have allowed their kings are the following. In the first place, two priesthoods, those (namely) of Lacedaemonian and of Celestial Jupiter; […] and of having a hundred picked men for their body guard while with the army; likewise the liberty of sacrificing as many cattle in their expeditions as it seems them good, and the right of having the skins and the chines of the slaughtered animals for their own use.

3. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
4. (nautical) A sharp angle in the cross section of a hull.
5. The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.
6. The back of the blade on a scythe.

chine (third-person singular simple present chines, present participle chining, simple past and past participle chined)

1. (transitive) To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
2. To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.

From Middle English chin (“crack, fissure, chasm”), from Old English ċine, ċinu, from Proto-Germanic *kinō. The Old English term is cognate to Old Saxon kena, and is related to the Old English verb cīnan ("to grow in size, crack, split, gape"), from Proto-Germanic *kīnaną ("to sprout, germinate, split open"), from Proto-Indo-European *geie ("to split open, to sprout").

chine (plural chines)

1. (Southern England) A steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea.
   • J. Ingelow

     The cottage in a chine.

   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library, Penguin Books (1988), page 169

     In the odorous stillness of the day I thought of the tracks that threaded Egdon Heath, and of benign, elderly Sandbourne, with its chines and sheltered beach-huts.

From Middle English chīnen (“to crack, fissure, split”), from Old English ċīnan (“to break into pieces, burst, crack”), from Proto-Germanic *kīnaną (“to split; crack; germinate; sprout”). See also cheep (“to break forth from a shell or calix; to hatch from an egg; to sprout or put out shoots”) and tochine.

chine (third-person singular simple present chines, present participle chining, simple past chined or chone or chane, past participle chined)

1. (obsolete) To crack, split, fissure, break. [9th-16th c.]

   The wayward son did chine his father's heart.

   A drought had caused the earth to chine and cranny.

   • Fisher (1503)

     After the erth be brent, chyned and chypped by the hete of the sonne.

• An historical dictionary

• Chien, niche

• Rhymes: -in

chine

1. first-person singular present indicative of chiner
2. third-person singular present indicative of chiner
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of chiner
4. first-person singular present subjunctive of chiner
5. second-person singular imperative of chiner

• chien, niche, niché

• IPA^(key): [ˈçɪnʲə]

chine m

1. Lenited form of cine.

chine

1. Feminine plural of adjective chino.

chine f pl

1. plural of china