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Etymology and origin of the English word chine

Pronunciation

chine1 ravine, cleft

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
King Alfred's translation of Boethius
Inherited from
Old English cinu via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Proto-Germanic *kinō

Etymology

The word for the cleft or ravine is inherited from Middle English chine, also chene and chin,[2][3] inherited from Old English cinu (“a chink, fissure”), often the weak feminine cine.[3][4][5][6] It goes back to Proto-Germanic *kinō,[1] and is cognate with Old Dutch kina (“creek, water channel”) in place names, Middle Dutch kēne (“crack”), Dutch keen and Old Saxon kina (“crack, chink”).[3][5] The OED derives it from a zero-grade ablaut variant of the Germanic base of the Old English verb cīnan (“to crack, gape”),[3][7] which is cognate with Old Saxon kīnan (“to sprout”), Old High German kīnan (“to sprout, germinate”) and Gothic 𐌺𐌴𐌹𐌽𐌰𐌽 (keinan, “to sprout”);[3][8][5] Klein traces the family to Proto-Indo-European *ǵēi- (“to germinate; to cleave, split”).[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

An open crack or fissure; a chink: early Old English, in King Alfred's translation of Boethius.[3] Bosworth–Toller quotes a homily in which a vessel was found so whole that no chink could be seen in it.[4]

Semantic evolution

In Old and Middle English the word was used of any crack or gap, and of a fissure, chasm or cave in the ground;[3][2] Weekley calls it a common Middle English word.[10] By the end of the 16th century it had been replaced by chink, which may be related, except in local use.[3][10] Place names show it early for kinds of valleys, as in Chineham, Hampshire (1086), Chynepol, Hampshire (1240) and Waterchine, Kent (1263), and for a coastal ravine in la Chyne at Shanklin, Isle of Wight (1324); names such as Shanklin Chine follow from 1550.[3][11] Hoad explains the modern sense, a deep narrow ravine cut by a stream, as generalized from these place names in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.[5] Wright's dialect dictionary describes the chines of the Isle of Wight as gullies worn by springs running over the cliffs to the sea, matching the bunnies of Hampshire.[12] The Middle English short vowel survived into early modern English; the OED finds the source of the modern diphthong unclear, probably the influence of the related verb,[3] while Smith calls it probably a spelling pronunciation.[11]

Timeline

  • early Old English – a crack or fissure in a surface; a chink (obsolete after 1582).[3]
  • early Old English – a fissure in the ground, a chasm, also a cave (obsolete after 1577).[3][2]
  • before 1387 – a cut made by a weapon (rare, obsolete).[3]
  • before 1398 – a crack in the skin, as from cold (obsolete after 1562).[3]
  • 1735 – a deep narrow ravine running down to the sea on the Isle of Wight and the Dorset coast.[3] Hoad dates this sense to the 19th century.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (chiefly in southern England) A deep, narrow ravine cut by a stream through soft rock down to the sea, as on the Isle of Wight and in Dorset: Shanklin Chine.[6][3][7]
  2. (obsolete, Old English–1582) A crack, fissure or chink.[3][7][2]

chine2 backbone

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
c. 1330 Sir Tristrem
Borrowed from
Anglo-Norman chine via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Proto-Germanic *skinō

Etymology

The word for the backbone is inherited from Middle English chine,[2][6] partly borrowed from Anglo-Norman chine, a rare 13th-century shortening of eschine, and partly shortened directly from that word,[3][7][5] Old French eschine, also achine (modern French échine), the spine or backbone (c. 1100), later also the back.[3][13][2] Most dictionaries take the French word as Germanic,[14][3][6][9] from the base of shin, which apparently first meant a thin, narrow piece of something hard;[3] Klein gives Frankish *skina and compares Old High German scina (“needle, prickle; shinbone”),[9][6] and Wiktionary gives Proto-Germanic *skinō.[1][8] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford see in it a blend, Vulgar Latin *skina, of the Germanic word with Latin spīna (“thorn, spine”),[5][7][15] while Etymonline calls the origin uncertain, perhaps Germanic.[13] Related Romance forms are Italian schiena and Old Occitan esquina.[3][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The spine, the backbone: about 1330, in Sir Tristrem.[3][2] Etymonline also dates it to about 1300.[13]

Semantic evolution

Already in Anglo-Norman, recorded from the third quarter of the 12th century, eschine meant the backbone of an animal or fish and a cut of meat with the backbone in it;[16] British Latin had eschina for a cut of pork from 1209.[3] The cookery sense appears in English about 1400, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.[3] From 1598 a chine was also the backbone and adjoining flesh of a pig left when the sides were cut off for bacon.[3] From about 1425, in Lydgate, the word meant the back as a whole, as in to bow the chine, to bow low in humility; this survived in northern dialect until the late 19th century.[3][7] Johnson (1755) defined it as the part of the back that holds the spine.[17] The verb followed in the 15th century, first of boning a fish and of cutting a carcass along the backbone,[3][6] and in Spenser (1596) of breaking a person's back.[3] The sense "ridge, crest", especially of a hill, is recorded from 1830.[3] In Wright's dialect dictionary it is the backbone in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the south-west, and in Oxfordshire and Berkshire a slice with the spine cut from a pig's back.[12]

Timeline

  • c. 1330 – the spine, backbone.[3][2]
  • c. 1400 – a cut of meat containing the backbone.[3]
  • c. 1425 – the back, also in to bow the chine, to bow low (both obsolete).[3]
  • before 1450 – verb, to remove the backbone of a fish, especially a salmon.[3]
  • c. 1450 – verb, in butchery, to cut along or through the backbone.[3][6]
  • 1596 – verb, to break the back of a person or animal.[3][7]
  • 1598 – the backbone and adjoining flesh of a pig, left after the sides are cut for bacon.[3]
  • 1830 – a ridge or crest, especially of a hill.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (archaic) The backbone or spine of an animal or a person.[6][18][3]
  2. A cut of meat containing all or part of an animal's backbone with the flesh next to it: a chine of pork.[18][6][3]
  3. A ridge or crest of land: They followed the chine of the downs.[18][6][3]
  4. (obsolete) The back.[3][7]

Verb

  1. To cut a carcass or joint along or across the backbone.[18][6][3]
  2. To cut up a fish, such as a salmon, by removing its backbone.[6][3]
  3. (rare or obsolete) To break the back of.[7][6][3]

Usage notes

A third chine, the projecting rim of a cask (before 1475) and in boats the angle where the bottom meets the side (1867), is a variant of chime, perhaps influenced by the word for the backbone.[3][7][5][18] The textile adjective chiné, mottled, is a separate borrowing from French, from the name of China.[3][18]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  11. ^ a b Smith, A. H. (1956), English Place-Name Elements, 2 vols. (English Place-Name Society 25–26), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  12. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  13. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  14. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  15. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  16. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  18. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Chine.” Etymologically, 8 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/chine. Accessed 9 Nov. 2026.

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