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''gin'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260313192153-00-⌔

gin - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

gin (countable and uncountable, plural gins)

  • A colourless non - aged alcoholic liquor made by distilling fermented grains such as barley, corn, oats or rye with juniper berries; the base for many cocktails.
  • (uncountable) Gin rummy.
  • (poker) Drawing the best card or combination of cards.
    • ✤ Johnny Chan held jack-nine, and hit gin when a queen-ten-eight board was dealt out.

Noun

gin (plural gins)

  • (obsolete) A trick; a device or instrument.
  • (obsolete) A scheme; contrivance; artifice; a figurative trap or snare.
    • ✤ The church dores were sparred,
      Fast boltyd and barryd,
      Yet wyth a prety gyn
      I fortuned to come in, […]      1
    • ✤ *treason and deceiptfull gin *2
  • A snare or trap for game.
    • ✤ It was the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin.3
  • A machine for raising or moving heavy objects, consisting of a tripod formed of poles united at the top, with a windlass, pulleys, ropes, etc.
  • (mining) A hoisting drum, usually vertical; a whim.
  • A pile driver.
  • A windpump.
  • A cotton gin.
  • An instrument of torture worked with screws.

Verb

gin (third-person singular simple present gins, present participle ginning, simple past and past participle ginned)

  • (transitive) To remove the seeds from cotton with a cotton gin.
  • (transitive) To trap something in a gin.

Verb

gin (third-person singular simple present gins, present participle ginning, simple past gan, past participle gun)

  • (archaic, Early Modern) To begin.
    • ✤ Gon. All three of them are deſperate: their great guilt/(Like poyſon giuen to worke a great time after)/Now gins to bite the ſpirits: […]4

Noun

gin (plural gins)

  • (Australia, now considered offensive, ethnic slur) An Aboriginal woman.
    • ✤ His next shot was discharged amongst the mob, and most unfortunately wounded the gin already mentioned; who, with a child fastened to her back, slid down the bank, and lay, apparently dying, with her legs in the water.5
    • ✤ On December 28, in the same year [1828], he [John Allen] fought single handed a tribe of native blacks, numbering from thirteen to eighteen, besides “gins” to bring them spears, waddies, etc.6
    • ✤ From my position I could see the gins pointing back, and as the men turned they looked for a moment and then made a wild rush for the entrance.7
    • ✤ How they must have laughed about the strutting of her whose mother was a wanton and aunt a gin!8
    • ✤ Dad said Shoesmith and Thompson had made one error that cost them their lives by letting the gins into the camp, and the blacks speared them all.9
    • ✤ But there was this gin there, see, what they called a kitchen girl.10

Conjunction

gin

  • (chiefly Scotland, Northern England, Southern US, Appalachia) If.
    • ✤ […] for pronouncing according as one would ſay at London I would eat more cheeſe if I had it, the Northern man ſaith, Ay ſuld eat mare cheeſe gin ay hadet, and the Weſterne man ſaith Chud eat more cheeſe an chad it.11
    • ✤ * Gin the plough rests on the bank,/The loom, the nation, dies.*12
    • ✤ An’gin I’m weel and can keep sober/You may look for it in October.13
    • ✤ He’s get han’ and siller,/Gin he fancies me.14
    • ✤ yon felley at Barleigh has wrote farrantly (fairly) to my naunt; gin Robin could bur see ť letter he’d foind no fawt wi’ me.15
    • ✤ Wheeah, Ah thinks thee could, gin ye tried.16
    • ✤ “Aw’d never ha slept i’ mi bed gin that little un had bin dreawnded, an’ me lookin’ on loike a stump. Neay; that lass wur Bess, moi wench. We’n no notion wheer th’ lad’s mother is.” Mr. Clough would have pressed the money upon him, but he put it back with a motion of his han.17
    • ✤ […] gin schoo sets off in a tantrum an’flaah’s t’mistress wiv her blutherin […]18

Etymology 1

Abbreviation of geneva, alteration of Dutch genever (“juniper”) from Old French genevre (modern French genièvre), from Vulgar Latin ziniperus, from Latin iūniperus (“juniper”). Hence gin rummy (first attested 1941).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: jĭn, IPA: /d͡ʒɪn/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɪn
  • Homophone: djinn

Etymology 2

Partly from Middle English gin, ginne (“cleverness, scheme, talent, device, machine”), from Old French gin, an aphetism of Old French engin (“engine”); and partly from Middle English grin, grine (“snare, trick, stratagem, deceit, temptation, noose, halter, instrument”), from Old English grin, gryn, giren (“snare, gin, noose”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: jĭn, IPA: /d͡ʒɪn/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɪn
  • Homophone: djinn

Etymology 3

Inherited from Middle English ginnen (“to begin”), contraction of beginnen.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ɡɪn/

Etymology 4

Borrowed from Dharug dyin (“woman”), but having acquired a derogatory tone.19

Pronunciation

  • enPR: jĭn, IPA: /d͡ʒɪn/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ɪn
  • Homophone: djinn

Etymology 5

Cognate to Scots gin (“if”): perhaps from gi(v)en,20 or a compound in which the first element is from Old English ġif (English if) and the second is cognate to English an (“if”) (compare iffen),20 or perhaps from again.20

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ɡɪn/

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 64, lines 91–94: ↩

  2. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1895, Thomas Hardy, “IV-ii”, in Jude the Obscure, London: Osgood: ↩

  4. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii], page 14: ↩

  5. 1869, Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, volume 1, page 273: ↩

  6. 1879 December 31, “Obituary”, in The Hobart Mercury, page 2: ↩

  7. 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre’s Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter XXI, [1] ↩

  8. 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XXI, in Capricornia, D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 353: ↩

  9. 1988, Tom Cole, Hell West and Crooked, Angus & Robertson, published 1995, page 179: ↩

  10. 2008, Bill Marsh, Jack Goldsmith, Goldie: Adventures in a Vanishing Australia, unnumbered page: ↩

  11. 1605, Richard Verstegan, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, in Antiquities: Concerning the Most Noble, and Renowned English Nation: ↩

  12. 1804, Robert Couper, Poetry, I. 196: ↩

  13. 1809, Thomas Donaldson, Poems, section 76: ↩

  14. 1815, Robert Anderson, Ballads in the Cumberland dialect, page 152: ↩

  15. 1860, J. P. K. Shuttleworth, Scarsdale; Or, Life on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Border, Thirty Years Ago, page 158: ↩

  16. 1870, John Christopher Atkinson, Lost; or, What came of a slip from ‘honour bright’., page 19: ↩

  17. 1876, Mrs. George Linnaeus Banks, The Manchester Man, page 15: ↩

  18. 1880, Wooers, Banks, I. iv: ↩

  19. R. M. W. Dixon, Australian Aboriginal Words, Oxford University Press, 1990, →ISBN, page 167. ↩

  20. “gin”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

Link to original

Secondary

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