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English
Noun
spink (plural spinks)
- (obsolete, dialectal) The chaffinch.
- The primrose.
- The lady's smock or cuckooflower.
Verb
spink (third-person singular simple present spinks, present participle spinking, simple past and past participle spinked)
- (intransitive, uncommon, of certain birds, especially chaffinchs and blackbirds) To call or vocalize.
1907 September, O. V. Aplin, “Notes on the Ornithology of Oxfordshire, 1905–1906”, in The Zoologist, volume XI, number 795, page 323:The Chaffinches ‘‘spinked” as though its presence was not required, but it seemed to be feeding on insects only.
1909 June 19, “Linnet Singing at Leeds. Unvarnished Reports versus Bluff and Bounce”, in Cage Birds and Bird World, volume XV, number 388, page 587:The Linnet called “ Chivvey ” can tweet and spink and song-sing, and is full of clicks and jars, like the other.
1954, Jack Badcock, chapter 3, in Waybent, London: Hutchingson & Co., page 77:And his voice sounded good, too, and loud and clear, and he put two of his fingers into his mouth and whistled, a piercing, high-pitched scream of a whistle, and there was a sudden silence as though the noise had penetrated the brain of all things and stunned movement; but in a second the spinking blackbird began again his yittering, and all were at song again.
1966 January 7 [1964 July 30], Paul Slud, The Birds of Costa Rica, page 65:The cry of this species, which consists of a number of rapidly ‘‘spinking” notes, reminds me of that of the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in the United States.
2016, John Lewis-Stempel, “The Turn of the Earth” (chapter VI), in The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland, Doubleday, page 277:6 DECEMBER The winter sun is a flat blade of white on the horizon. Blackbirds are spinking, a charmless sound, done by rote.
2017, Karen Lloyd, “The Land Remade” (chapter 13), in The Blackbird Diaries: A Year with Wildlife, Saraband, page 146:Somewhere in the five gardens, a blackbird spinked, petulantly.
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