pinching

Pluralpinchings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pinch.

   She sat at her desk pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to stay awake.

   Rising rents are pinching families who were already struggling to get by.

   Note

   The form covers a wide spread of squeezes: fingers on skin, shoes on feet, and shortage on households, as when rising rents are pinching families. In slang it means stealing, usually something small, so she keeps pinching my pens is a complaint about theft, not an assault. After be it describes a squeeze still going on: these shoes are pinching.

2. 2
   adjective

   Squeezing hard enough to hurt, or causing a sharp feeling like that of a pinch, as bitter cold can.

   A pinching wind came off the lake and turned our ears red within minutes.

   She kicked off the pinching heels as soon as she got home from the wedding.

   Similarbiting, nipping, tight

   Note

   Cold is the classic thing that pinches, alongside tight shoes: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island has "a pinching, frosty morning", the cove gray with hoarfrost. The adjective usually stands before its noun, and unlike the participle it compares with more and most, as in the most pinching wind of the winter.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of squeezing something tightly, whether by a person's fingers or by something that grips.

   The crab's sudden pinching made him drop it back into the tide pool.

   She sealed the edges of the dumplings with quick little pinchings of the dough.

   Similarsqueezing, nipping

   Note

   The noun turns countable when the acts are small and repeated. Paul Theroux's The Lower River (2012) has a man peeling an orange in "fastidious pinchings", each pinch a separate, careful movement, and a cook sealing dumplings works the same way. In the singular it names the squeezing as a whole.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act of stealing, or a single instance of it.

   A run of petty pinching from the staff room led the manager to put a lock on the door.

   The band's most famous pinching was a melody lifted almost note for note from an older hit.

   Similartheft, stealing, pilfering

   Note

   Counted as single acts, pinchings can be petty thefts or something closer to borrowing without asking. Wayne Jancik's The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders (1990) uses it for a band that re-recorded other acts' hits, calling its version of the Jayhawks' "Stranded in the Jungle" its "most publicly-known pinching". Used that way it suggests lifting, not breaking in.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   In horticulture, the removal of a plant's new growth by pinching it off.

   With regular pinching through early summer, the chrysanthemums grew into thick, rounded mounds.

   The growers compared plants given three pinchings with plants that were left alone.

   Note

   Gardeners speak of pinching out a shoot: taking off its soft tip with thumb and forefinger so that the buds below grow instead, which gives a bushier plant with more stems. Growers count and time it, so the plural comes naturally; the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station's Bimonthly Bulletin in 1926 compared varieties by their number of pinchings and by the date pinching stopped.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5