Word.ws English Dictionary

wince

/wɪns/

wince noun: a sudden movement or gesture of shrinking away.

wince: a sudden movement or gesture of shrinking away
Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

wince (plural winces)

  1. A sudden movement or gesture of shrinking away.
  2. A reel used in dyeing, steeping, or washing cloth; a winch. It is placed over the division wall between two wince pits so as to allow the cloth to descend into either compartment at will.

Verb

wince (third-person singular simple present winces, present participle wincing, simple past and past participle winced)

  1. (intransitive) To flinch as if in pain or distress.
    • I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word.c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • “Perhaps it is because I have been excommunicated. It's absurd, but I feel like the Jackdaw of Rheims.” ¶ She winced and bowed her head. Each time that he spoke flippantly of the Church he caused her pain.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To wash (cloth), dip it in dye, etc., with the use of a wince.
  3. To kick or flounce when unsteady or impatient.
    • A horse winces.

Proper noun capitalized: Wince

Wince (plural Winces)

  1. A surname.

wince meaning in Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

wince in Urdu

جھرجھرانا, گھبرانا, پیچھے ہٹنا

wince in Malayalam

pull a face, grimace, flinch
മുഖം ചുളിക്കുക, വേദന കൊണ്ടു മുഖം കോട്ടുക, മുഖം വക്രിപ്പിക്കുക, വികൃതകോഷ്ടി കാണിക്കുക, ചൂളുക, ഞെട്ടിപ്പിടയുക
flinch, grimace, start
ഞെട്ടിച്ചുരുളൽ, ചുളിയൽ, കോഷ്ടി, കുചേഷ്ട, കോക്കിറി, വിതുപ്പ്

wince in Kannada

ಹಿಂದೆ ಸರಿ, ಮೋರೆ ಕಿವುಚು

Examples of wince in a sentence

  • Supporters of behaviorism claim that to be "in pain" is nothing more than the tendency to wince, yelp, scream "ouch!" and so on.
  • The smoulder in his eyes dimmed, and he winced, half bending in agony.
  • Winced and shifted some more—stabby nerve-ending pain out of nowhere, per usual.

All 22 example sentences with wince

Forms of wince

Noun
pluralwinces
Verb
third-person singular presentwinces
present participlewincing
past participlewinced
pastwinced
Proper noun
pluralWinces

Plural of wince: winces

Origin of wince

From Middle English wyncen, from Anglo-Norman winchir (compare Old French guenchir), from Frankish *wankjan, related to *winkijan (“to flex, bend”). See also German winken.

German surname, probably Americanized from Winz, Wintz.

Words that rhyme with wince

Questions about wince

What does wince mean?
Wince means a sudden movement or gesture of shrinking away.
What is wince in Urdu?
Wince in Urdu is جھرجھرانا, گھبرانا, پیچھے ہٹنا. See Wince meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is wince?
Wince can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wince?
Wince is pronounced /wɪns/.
What is the plural of wince?
The plural of wince is winces.

Words near wince in the dictionary

  1. Winbushes
  2. Winby
  3. Winc
  4. Wincanton
  5. Wincarnis
  6. wince
  7. Winceby
  8. winced
  9. wincer
  10. wincers
  11. winces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wince (page history and authors); Wince (page history and authors); wince (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wince (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); wince (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wince.ogg.

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