Word.ws English Dictionary

chine

/t͡ʃaɪn/

chine noun: the top of a ridge.

Noun (1)

chine (plural chines)

  1. The top of a ridge.
  2. The spine of an animal.
    • And chine with rising bristles roughly spread.1717, John Dryden [et al.], “(please specify |book=I to XV)”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
    • […] the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard […]1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
  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.

Verb (1)

chine (third-person singular simple present chines, present participle chining, simple past and past participle chined)

  1. (transitive) To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
  2. (transitive) To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.

Noun (2)

chine (plural chines)

  1. (Southern-England, Vancouver) A steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea.
    • The cottage in a chine, we were not to behold it.1885, Jean Ingelow, A Cottage in a Chine
    • In the odorous stillness of the day I thought of the tracks that threaded Egdon Heath, and of benign, elderly Sandbourne, with its chines and sheltered beach-huts.1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 169

Verb (2)

chine (third-person singular simple present chines, present participle chining, simple past and past participle chined)

  1. (obsolete) To crack, split, fissure, break.
    • The wayward son did chine his father's heart.
    • A drought had caused the earth to chine and cranny.

Noun (3)

chine (plural chines)

  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.

chine meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Kannada

chine in Tamil

நெடுவிடர், படப் பட்டு வெல்வெட்டுத் துணி, விலங்கு முதுகெலும்பு, ஓடைத் தடம்

chine in Urdu

ریڑھ کی ہڈی

chine in Bengali

মেরুদণ্ড, পিঠের মাংসের অংশ

chine in Kannada

ಏರುದಿಣ್ಣೆ

Forms of chine

Noun
pluralchines
alternative formchimb
alternative formchime
Verb
third-person singular presentchines
present participlechining
past participlechined
pastchined

Plural of chine: chines

Origin of chine

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

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

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”).

Words formed from chine

Phrases with chine

Words that rhyme with chine

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about chine

What does chine mean?
Chine means the top of a ridge.
What is chine in Tamil?
Chine in Tamil is நெடுவிடர், படப் பட்டு வெல்வெட்டுத் துணி, விலங்கு முதுகெலும்பு. See Chine meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is chine?
Chine can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce chine?
Chine is pronounced /t͡ʃaɪn/.
What is the plural of chine?
The plural of chine is chines.

Words near chine in the dictionary

  1. Chindo
  2. Chindos
  3. Chindu
  4. Chindwin
  5. Chindwinn
  6. chine
  7. Chinea
  8. Chineas
  9. chined
  10. Chinee
  11. Chinees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chine (page history and authors); chine (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); chine (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); chine (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); chine (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-chine.wav.

Cite this entry: “chine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.