pinch

From Middle English pinchen, from Old French *pinchier, pincer (“to pinch”), from Vulgar Latin *pinciāre (“to puncture, pinch”), from possible merger of *punctiāre (“a puncture, sting”), from Latin punctiō (“a puncture, prick”) and *piccāre (“to strike, sting”), from Frankish *pikkōn, from Proto-Germanic *pikkōną (“to pick, peck, prick”).

• IPA^(key): /pɪntʃ/

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• Rhymes: -ɪntʃ

pinch (third-person singular simple present 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.
   • 2014, Harlan Ellison, Paingod and Other Delusions, →ISBN:

     He took the plate in his hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger at one corner, letting it hang down. With the other hand he pinched it at the opposite corner, pressing thumb and forefinger together tightly.

3. To squeeze between two objects.
   • 2012, Supriyo Bandyopadhyay, Physics of Nanostructured Solid State Devices, →ISBN, page 446:

     Since the resistance of the channel is inversely proportional to its width, the most resistive region is the one pinched between the gates where they come closest to each other.

4. To steal, usually of something almost trivial or inconsequential.

   Someone has pinched my handkerchief!

   • 2012 May 13, Alistair Magowan, “Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport‎:

     Then, as the Sunderland fans' cheers bellowed around the stadium, United's title bid was over when it became apparent City had pinched a last-gasp winner to seal their first title in 44 years.

5. (slang) To arrest or capture.
6. (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
7. (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
8. (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
9. (obsolete) To be niggardly or covetous.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gower to this entry?)

   • Franklin

     the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare

10. To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
    • Chapman

      He [the hound] pinched and pulled her down.

11. (figuratively) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.

    to be pinched for money

    • Sir Walter Raleigh

      want of room […] pinching a whole nation

    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 2:

      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.

12. To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
13. (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.

• pinch off
• pinch out
• pinch a loaf

pinch (plural pinches)

1. The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
2. A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
3. An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
   • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, →ISBN, page 171:

     It took nerve and muscle both to carry the body out and down the stairs to the lower hall, but he damn well had to get it out of his place and away from his door, and any of those four could have done it in a pinch, and it sure was a pinch.

4. An organic herbal smoke additive.
5. (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
6. 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.

7. (slang) An arrest.

• → Japanese: ピンチ (pinchi)