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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

chine.

The top of a ridge.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/t͡ʃaɪn/
  1. The top of a ridge.

  2. The spine of an animal.

  3. A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.

  4. The back of the blade on a scythe.

Where this word comes from

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

verb/t͡ʃaɪn/
  1. To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.

    transitive
  2. To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

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

noun/t͡ʃaɪn/
  1. A steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea.

    Southern-England · Vancouver
Where this word comes from

From Middle English chyne, chynne (“crack, fissure, chasm”), from Old English ċine, ċinu, from Proto-West Germanic *kinu, from Proto-Germanic *kinō.

verb/t͡ʃaɪn/
  1. To crack, split, fissure, break.

    obsolete
    The wayward son did chine his father's heart.
    A drought had caused the earth to chine and cranny.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English chynen (“to crack, fissure, split”), from Old English ċīnan (“to break into pieces, burst, crack”), from Proto-West Germanic *kīnan, from Proto-Germanic *kīnaną (“to split; crack; germinate; sprout”).

noun/t͡ʃaɪn/
  1. The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.

  2. A hollowed or bevelled channel in the waterway of a ship's deck.

  3. A sharp angle in the cross section of a hull.

  4. A longitudinal line of sharp change in the cross-section profile of the fuselage or similar body.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English chyne, alteration of Middle English chyme, chymbe, from Old English *ċimb. More at chimb.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.