cinch
/sɪntʃ/
cinch noun: a simple saddle girth used in Mexico.
Noun (1)
cinch (plural cinches)
- A simple saddle girth used in Mexico.
- He found Andy morosely replacing some broken strands in his cinch, and he went straight at the mooted question.1915, B. M. Bower, The Flying U's Last Stand
- Something that is very easy to do.
- We thought we had a cinch on getting out by way of this cord and so we followed that.1913, Major Archibald Lee Fletcher, Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns
- The job was a snap. I travelled the country averaging a thousand miles a week and, since the previous incumbent had been a lazy bugger, managed to treble the business. It was a cinch.2003, Clive Selwood, All the Moves (but None of the Licks), page 33
- Synonyms:
- piece of cake
- Something that is obvious or certain to occur; a sure thing.
- As a matter of fact, from the look of Elmer's shoulder, it wasn't a cinch that he would ever pitch again.1916 March 11, Charles E. Van Loan, “His Folks”, in Saturday Evening Post
- Synonyms:
- sure thing
- A firm hold.
- You've got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and I'd send him there as quick as lightning. I'd hang him, if I could, for what he done to Lil Sarnia.1916, Gilbert Parker, The World For Sale
Verb (1)
cinch (third-person singular simple present cinches, present participle cinching, simple past and past participle cinched)
- To bring to certain conclusion.
- To tighten down.
- He let Sandy stand for a minute and then took the saddle off. Several more of these saddlings and unsaddlings followed. Then finally the saddle was cinched. Again Sandy repeated his pattern of calming down after the first unfamiliarity of a new experience had worn off. […] Before long Sandy...1954, Troy Nesbit [pseudonym; Franklin Folsom], “Sacking Out”, in Sand Dune Pony (Wilderness Mysteries; 1), Racine, Wis.: Whitman Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 145
- [Ostriches] also lack the tiny hooks, or barbicels, that cinch feathers together in most other birds.2020 August 4, Richard Conniff, “They may look goofy, but ostriches are nobody’s fool”, in National Geographic Magazine
Noun (2)
cinch (plural cinches)
- A variety of auction pitch in which a draw to improve the hand is added, and the five of trumps (called "right Pedro") and the five of the same colour (called "left Pedro", and ranking between the five and the four of trumps) are each worth five. Fifty-one points make a game.
- Synonyms:
- double Pedro, high five
Verb (2)
cinch (third-person singular simple present cinches, present participle cinching, simple past and past participle cinched)
- In the game of cinch, to protect (a trick) by playing a higher trump than the five.
Noun (3)
cinch
- An RCA connector.
cinch meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
cinch in Tamil
- எளிதான காரியம்
cinch in Bengali
- অত্যন্ত সহজ কাজ, নিশ্চিত বিষয়
cinch in Malayalam
- easy task, child's play, five-finger exercise
- അനായാസജോലി, അയത്നസാധ്യം, എളുപ്പം പൂർത്തിയാക്കാവുന്ന ജോലി, എളുപ്പപ്പണി, കുട്ടിക്കളി, കളിമ്പം
- certainty, sure thing, dead certain
- ഉറപ്പ്, തീർച്ചയായകാര്യം, നിശ്ചിതത്വം, കയ്യിൽപ്പുണ്ണ്, പ്രത്യക്ഷമായിട്ടള്ളത്
cinch in Kannada
- ಸರಳವಾದುದು, ಸುಲಭವಾದುದು, ಖಂಡಿತವಾದುದು
Examples of cinch in a sentence
- Zelly settled into being such a happy, well-behaved infant that she became what Shannon calls a “decoy baby”—the kind that tricks other young couples into thinking that having kids is a cinch.2015, Steve Silberman, chapter 2, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York...
- I cinched the straps on my lifejacket a bit tighter and held on for dear life.2022, Amour Vincit Omnia, “Why The Price Of Love Is Pain”, in Agapé, volume 22, number 1, page 5:
Synonyms of cinch
Forms of cinch
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cinches |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cinches |
| present participle | cinching |
| past participle | cinched |
| past | cinched |
Origin of cinch
Borrowed from Occitan cencha, from Latin cincta, or from Spanish cincha (“a belt or girth”), from Late Latin cingula, from Latin cingulum. Doublet of cingle.
Compare senses at etymology 1 (a girth, a tight grip), perhaps suggesting the tactics used in the game; or perhaps from Spanish cinco (“five”), the five spots of the colour of the trump being important cards.
Uncertain; perhaps from Cinch Connectors, a Chicago-based company producing connectors.
Words formed from cinch
Words that rhyme with cinch
Questions about cinch
- What does cinch mean?
- Cinch means a simple saddle girth used in Mexico.
- What is cinch in Tamil?
- Cinch in Tamil is எளிதான காரியம். See Cinch meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use cinch in a sentence?
- Zelly settled into being such a happy, well-behaved infant that she became what Shannon calls a “decoy baby”—the kind that tricks other young couples into thinking that having kids is a cinch.
- What part of speech is cinch?
- Cinch can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cinch?
- Cinch is pronounced /sɪntʃ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cinch?
- The plural of cinch is cinches.
Words near cinch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cinch (page history and authors); cinch (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cinch (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cinch (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); cinch (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)-I learned some phrases-cinch.wav, En-us-cinch.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cinch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cinch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.