hinge

Etymology

From Middle English henge, from Old English *henġ (“hinge”), compare Old English henġe- in henġeclif (“overhanging cliff”), Old English henġen (“hanging; that upon which a thing is hung”), from Proto-West Germanic *hangiju. Akin to Scots heenge (“hinge”), Saterland Frisian Hänge (“hinge”), Dutch heng (“door handle”), Low German henge (“a hook, hinge, handle”), Middle Dutch henghe, hanghe (“a hook, hinge, handle”), Scots hingel (“any attachment by which something is hung or fastened”), Dutch hengel (“hook”), geheng (“hinge”), hengsel (“handle”), dialectal German Hängel (“hook, joint”), German Henkel (“handle, hook”), Old English hōn (“to hang”), hangian (“to cause to hang, hang up”). More at hang.

noun

1. A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.
2. A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.
   The pedicel of the pollinium is articulated as before by a hinge to the disc; it can move freely only in one direction owing to one end of the disc being upturned. 1862, Charles Darwin, The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects
3. A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.
4. A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.
   This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.
   But let me say, with all deference, that these positions do not appear to me to touch the hinge of the argument before us. 1840, Adam Duncan Tait, Remarks on a Pamphlet by the Reverend James Buchanan, page 26
5. (statistics) The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.
6. One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.
   If when the Moon is in the Hinge at East, / The Birth breaks forward from its native rest; / Full Eighty Years, if you two Years abate, / This Station gives, and long defers its Fate 1697, Thomas Creech, The five books of Mr. Manilius containing a system of the ancient astronomy and astrology: together with the philosophy of the Stoicks, page 121
7. A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.

verb

1. (transitive) To attach by, or equip with a hinge.
2. (intransitive, with on or upon) To depend on something.
   Games can hinge on the sort of controversial decision made by Taylor in the 10th minute. After Rivière collected Gabriel Obertan’s pass and sashayed beyond Daley Blind he drew the United centre-half into a rash, clumsy challenge but, puzzlingly, Taylor detected no penalty. 4 March 2015, Louise Taylor, The Guardian
3. (transitive, archaeology) The breaking off of the distal end of a knapped stone flake whose presumed course across the face of the stone core was truncated prematurely, leaving not a feathered distal end but instead the scar of a nearly perpendicular break.
   The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.
4. (obsolete) To bend.
5. To move or already be positioned in such a fashion that it presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.