Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A whinstone.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A name given in the north of England and in Wales to various rocks, chiefly to basalt, but also to any unusually hard quartzose sandstone. The latter is sometimes called
white or gray whin, the basalt blue whin. Seewhin-sill . - noun An erroneous form of
whim , 3. - noun Same as
wheen . - noun A plant of the genus Ulex, the furze or gorse, chiefly U. Europæus and U. nanus. See
furze ,1, and cut underUlex . - noun Same as
rest-harrow , 1.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Gorse; furze. See
Furze . - noun Woad-waxed.
- noun Prov. Eng. Same as
Whinstone . - noun (Bot.) a low prickly shrub (
Genista Anglica ) common in Western Europe. - noun a machine for cutting and bruising whin, or furze, to feed cattle on.
- noun (Zoöl.), [Prov. Eng.] the hedge sparrow.
- noun (Zoöl.), [Prov. Eng.] the redwing.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Gorse ;furze . - noun The plant
woad-waxen . - noun
whinstone
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun very spiny and dense evergreen shrub with fragrant golden-yellow flowers; common throughout western Europe
- noun any of various hard colored rocks (especially rocks consisting of chert or basalt)
- noun small Eurasian shrub having clusters of yellow flowers that yield a dye; common as a weed in Britain and the United States; sometimes grown as an ornamental
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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What th 'Czar whispered to th' Imp'ror Willum whin they were alone, how to make a silk hat out iv a wire matthress, how to settle th 'coal sthrike, who to marry, how to get on with ye'er wife whin ye're married, what to feed th' babies, what doctor to call whin ye've fed thim as directed, -- all iv that ye'll find in th 'pa-apers.
Observations By Mr. Dooley Finley Peter Dunne 1901
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"You'll git a good chance at the stag whin he tops the hillock forenent you, sor," remarked the somewhat garrulous Irishman.
The Eagle Cliff 1859
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a seam of coal about six inches thick of no value, which lies under about four fathom of clay, beneath this is a white freestone, then a hard stone, which the workmen there call a whin, then two fathoms of clay, then another white stone, and under that a vein of coals three feet nine inches thick, of a similar nature to the Newcastle coal.
The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation Erasmus Darwin 1766
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E-vasion I calls it, bekaze, exceptin 'whin 'tis right an' natural an 'proper, 'tis wrong an' dhirty to steal a man's wan child she not knowin 'her own mind.
Soldiers Three Rudyard Kipling 1900
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E-vasion I calls it, bekaze, exceptin 'whin 'tis right an' natural an 'proper, 'tis wrong an' dhirty to steal a man's wan child, she not knowin 'her own mind.
Indian Tales Rudyard Kipling 1900
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An 'have ye niver drifted along, the water clear as glass, whin suddin, belike a cloud over the sun, the mushy-ice comes bubblin' up an 'up till from bank to bank an' bind to bind it's drapin 'the river like a first snowfall?'
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That's the reason why she continue telling them – b/c she will whin, stump and call it sexism if anyone challenge her on anything.
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An 'have ye niver drifted along, the water clear as glass, whin suddin, belike a cloud over the sun, the mushy-ice comes bubblin' up an 'up till from bank to bank an' bind to bind it's drapin 'the river like a first snowfall?'
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But ye did in the ind, "he exclaimed, triumphantly," whin ye saw I was goin 'to lave ye for sure.
CHAPTER I 2010
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The folklore of golf, for another example, tells us that the game began on the links of the Scottish coast, the happy accident of their whin-and-sand-and-cliffsideturf variousness.
bilby commented on the word whin
The examples show dialectical uses equivalent to those of modern (standard) English when. This usage as a variant of when is not described in any of the definitions. Which I read, despite being totally distracted by woad-waxed.
July 10, 2012