Word.ws English Dictionary

chink-a-chink

chink-a-chink noun: a magic trick where four small items appear to move around a mat with just the wave of the magician's bare hands.

chink-a-chink: a magic trick where four small items appear to move around a mat with just the wave of the...
Image: Niklaus Gerber, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

chink-a-chink (uncountable)

  1. A magic trick where four small items appear to move around a mat with just the wave of the magician's bare hands.

Origin of chink-a-chink

Attributed to Max Malini in the early 20th century. Probably an onomatopoeia.

Questions about chink-a-chink

What does chink-a-chink mean?
Chink-a-chink means a magic trick where four small items appear to move around a mat with just the wave of the magician's bare hands.
What part of speech is chink-a-chink?
Chink-a-chink is a noun.

Words near chink-a-chink in the dictionary

  1. chink cough
  2. chink in the armor
  3. chink in the armour
  4. chink land
  5. chink up
  6. chink-a-chink
  7. chink-land
  8. Chinka
  9. chinkapin
  10. chinkapin oak
  11. chinkapin oaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chink-a-chink (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.

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