shin

Pluralshins

Formsshins, shinning, shinned

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The front part of the leg below the knee, lying over the shinbone.

   He scraped his shin climbing over the wooden fence.

   The defender took a hard kick to the shins during the game.

   Similartibia

   Note

   The body-part noun behind the verbs, traced through Middle English schyne to Old English scinu, with cognates in Dutch scheen and German Schiene. Despite the look, it has nothing to do with skin. Tibia names the bone itself, while shin is the everyday word for the front of the lower leg. In talk of injuries it often turns plural, as in a kick or a knock to the shins.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The twenty-first letter of many Semitic alphabets and abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic.

   In Hebrew script, shin is written with three upward strokes.

   Many Semitic scripts place shin near the end of their letter order.

   Note

   A separate word from the leg that happens to share its spelling. The letter stands for a sibilant. Pointed Hebrew splits it in two with a diacritic dot: one placement gives shin, pronounced "sh," and the other gives sin, a plain "s." Learners of Hebrew therefore meet two names for what looks like a single letter.

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To climb up or lower yourself down a mast, tree, or rope by gripping it with the arms and legs, without steps or spurs.

   Boys would shin up the lamppost to retrieve a stuck kite.

   She shinned up the drainpipe to climb through the open window.

   Similarshinny

   Note

   A climber's verb that pairs with a direction word: you shin up a mast or shin down a water-pipe, as the escapee in Norman Lindsay's The Flyaway Highway (1936) does before roaring off on a motorcycle. Up or down carries the direction, and the verb carries the effort. The n doubles in shinned and shinning. Shinny is the same idea in a longer form.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To strike a person or object with the shin.

   The striker managed to shin the ball into the net from close range.

   She shinned the chair leg as she rushed past it.

   Note

   Football writing is where this verb earns its keep, when the ball comes off the shin rather than the boot. In Mark Ashenden's BBC report on Wolverhampton 1–0 Chelsea (2011), the defender Boswinga shins the ball into his own net, and the context makes the contact sound anything but deliberate. The past tense and participle are both shinned, with a doubled n.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A fishplate, a steel plate bolted across the ends of two adjoining railway rails to join them.

   The maintenance team replaced a rusted shin where the two rails met.

   Each joint along the line was secured with a steel shin and four bolts.

   Similarfishplate

6. 6
   verbslangUSintransitive

   To hurry about borrowing money on a short-term basis, as when scrambling to make a payment.

   With payday still a week off, he shinned about town trying to cover the debt.

   Merchants often had to shin for funds when a large note fell due.

   Similarscramble, scrounge

   Note

   American slang for the scramble of short-term borrowing. The New York Commercial Advertiser of 1845 shows a senator "shinning around, to get gold." The verb travels with around or about, which paints the picture of hurrying from lender to lender. Treat it as a period word, and use it only in a historical or deliberately colorful American setting, where readers will expect it.

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