# gin

Pronunciation: say "JIN" /d͡ʒɪn/

## Noun

1. A colorless, unaged liquor distilled from fermented grains such as barley, corn, or rye and flavored with juniper berries; it serves as the base for many cocktails.
   - Simple: A clear, strong alcoholic drink made from grain, with a taste that comes from juniper berries.
   - _The distillery flavors its gin with juniper picked from the surrounding hills._
   - _A classic martini is made with gin and a splash of dry vermouth._
2. A machine that separates cotton fibers from their seeds; short for cotton gin.
   - Simple: A machine that pulls the seeds out of cotton.
   - _Growers hauled wagonloads of cotton to the gin after the harvest._
   - _A single gin could clean as much cotton in a day as dozens of workers could by hand._
3. The card game gin rummy, a two-player form of rummy in which players collect sets and runs of cards.
   - Simple: A card game for two players where you collect groups of matching cards.
   - _They played gin every evening on the long train ride west._
   - _She kept score while her brothers argued over a hand of gin._
5. In a card game, the act of drawing the best possible card or combination of cards.
   - Simple: Getting the best card, or the best set of cards, you could hope for in a game.
   - _He caught gin on the final card when the ace completed his straight._
   - _She hit gin on the river when the seven she needed filled her straight._
6. A snare or trap set to catch game animals such as rabbits or birds.
   - Simple: A trap used to catch wild animals for food or fur.
   - _The poacher set a gin along the hedge where the rabbits ran._
   - _By morning a stoat had been caught fast in the gin._
7. A machine for hoisting heavy loads, such as a tripod of poles fitted with pulleys and a windlass, or a drum around which a rope winds.
   - Simple: A machine with ropes, pulleys, or a turning drum for lifting heavy things.
   - _The crew rigged a gin over the well shaft to haul up the broken pump._
   - _Quarry workers swung the dressed stone aside with a gin and a team of mules._
9. An Aboriginal woman (now considered offensive in Australian English). *(Australia)*
   - Simple: A very offensive word for an Aboriginal woman in Australia.
   - _Early colonial writers often used the offensive word "gins" for Aboriginal women._
   - _Historians quoting old station records note that "gin" was a slur for an Aboriginal woman._

## Verb

4. To remove the seeds from harvested cotton using a cotton gin.
   - Simple: To take the seeds out of cotton with a special machine.
   - _Local mills gin thousands of bales of cotton every season._
   - _The plant ginned the entire harvest in under two weeks._

## Conjunction

Pronunciation: say "GIN" /ɡɪn/

8. If; used to introduce a condition. *(dialectal, Appalachia, Northern England, Scotland, Southern US)*
   - Simple: Means 'if'. People use it mostly in Scottish talk and old songs.

## Verb

10. To begin; to start. *(archaic)* (pronounced: say "GIN" /ɡɪn/)
   - Simple: To start, or to begin doing something.

## Noun

11. A trick, scheme, or artifice; a figurative trap. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: An old word for a trick or trap.

## Other meanings

- (verb) To trap something, such as an animal, in a gin or snare.
- (noun) A machine that drives piles, the heavy posts that support structures, into the ground; a pile driver.
- (noun) A windpump; a machine that uses wind power to raise water.
- (noun) An instrument of torture operated by turning screws.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3, 5** — Gin is short for geneva, an altered form of Dutch genever ("juniper"), which goes back through Old French genevre and Vulgar Latin ziniperus to Latin iūniperus ("juniper"). From gin came gin rummy, first recorded in 1941.
**Meanings 2, 4, 6–7, 11** — The word has two sources in Middle English. One is gin or ginne ("cleverness, device, machine"), a shortened form of Old French engin ("engine"). The other is grin or grine ("snare, trick, noose"), which came from Old English grin, gryn or giren ("snare, noose").
**Meaning 10** — Inherited from Middle English "ginnen" (to begin), a contraction of "beginnen."
**Meaning 9** — Borrowed from Dharug "dyin" (woman), but having acquired a derogatory tone.
**Meaning 8** — Scots gin ("if") is the same word. It may have started as gi(v)en or as again. It may also be a compound, with a first part that grew out of Old English ġif (the source of English if) and a second part cognate with English an ("if").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/gin (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).