whin
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English
Pronunciation
- enPR: wīn, IPA(key): /wɪn/
- (without the wine–whine merger) enPR: hwīn, IPA(key): /ʍɪn/
- Rhymes: -ɪn
- Homophone: win (wine–whine merger)
Etymology 1
From Middle English whynne, from Old Norse hvein (“gorse, furze”) (compare Norwegian kvein (“bent grass”), Swedish ven (“bent grass”), dialectal hven (“swamp”)), apparently from hvein (“swampy land”), from Proto-Germanic *hwainō, *hwin- (“swamp; moor”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱʷeyn- (“to soil; mud; filth”). Compare Latin caenum (“filth”), Latin inquīnō (“to sully; soil”).
Noun
whin (countable and uncountable, plural whins)
- Gorse; furze (Ulex spp.).
- 1790, Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter, 1828, Thomas Park (editor), Works of the British Poets, Volume XX: The Poems of Robert Burns, page 65,
- By this time he was cross the ford, / Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; / And past the birks and meikle stane, / Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; / And through the whins, and by the cairn, / Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; / And near the thorn, aboon the well, / Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.
- 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, “Sunset Song”, in A Scots Quair, Canongate Books, published 1995, page 38:
- And sometimes they clambered down […] and saw the whin bushes climb black the white hills beside them and far and away the blink of lights across the moors where folk lay happed and warm.
- 1790, Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter, 1828, Thomas Park (editor), Works of the British Poets, Volume XX: The Poems of Robert Burns, page 65,
- The plant woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria).[1]
Derived terms
Further reading
Etymology 2
Noun
whin
References
- ^ Asa Gray (1857) “.] Whin.”, in First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology, , New York, N.Y.: Ivison & Phinney and G P Putnam & Co., , →OCLC.
- “whin”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
Anagrams
Middle English
Verb
whin
- (Northern) Alternative form of winnen (“to win”)