sinik
sinik noun: the distance that can be traveled in a day given the current terrain and conditions, used as a measurement by the native peoples of Greenland.
Noun (1)
sinik (plural sinik or siniks)
- The distance that can be traveled in a day given the current terrain and conditions, used as a measurement by the native peoples of Greenland.
- From Etah to Uunartoq the three of us will be able to manage the transportation, and in two trips — well, we'll see. Four or five siniks.1982, Jean Malaurie, The Last Kings of Thule
- In North Greenland distances are measured in sinik, in 'sleeps', the number of nights that a journey requires. It's not a fixed distance. Depending on the weather and the time of year, the number of sinik can vary.2012, Richard Noss, Celia Hoyles, Windows on Mathematical Meanings: Learning Cultures and Computers, →ISBN
Noun (2)
sinik (plural siniks)
- The spirit or magical force associated with an item in the belief system of New Guinea.
- You've been handling the ancestral bones, so you can't touch my baby for three days — until the sinik of the bones leaves you. Otherwise, the sinik will possess my little one, who is small and weak, and its magical force will surely kill him!"1973, National Geographic Society (U.S.). Special Publications Division, Primitive worlds: people lost in time
- In parallel, female associated sinik, such as birth fluids, afterbirth, and menstrual blood, are always harmful to initiated men to the point of illness or death.1976, Research Reports - National Geographic Society - Volume 9, page 497
Examples of sinik in a sentence
- But I'm also panting in relief that our journey's done for the sinik and we've found some refuge for the night.2013, Heather Terrell, Chronicle: Before the Books of Eva, →ISBN:
- In so doing, the sinik was extinguished so that the victim could not even become a momoyok, the normal fate of the sinik of war victims: "he was finished with his name."1980 Winter, Dan Jorgensen, “What's in a name: The meaning of meaninglessness in Telefolmin”, in Ethos: Journal of the Society for...
Forms of sinik
| plural | sinik |
|---|---|
| plural | siniks |
Questions about sinik
- What does sinik mean?
- Sinik means the distance that can be traveled in a day given the current terrain and conditions, used as a measurement by the native peoples of Greenland.
- How do you use sinik in a sentence?
- But I'm also panting in relief that our journey's done for the sinik and we've found some refuge for the night.
- What part of speech is sinik?
- Sinik is a noun.
- What is the plural of sinik?
- The plural of sinik is sinik.
Words near sinik in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sinik (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: “sinik.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sinik. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.