Pinch

How to spell pinch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pinch

What does pinch mean?

1. verbTo squeeze something tightly, especially between a finger and thumb or between two surfaces.
2. nounA very small quantity of a powdery substance, as much as can be held between finger and thumb.

Pinch in a sentence

• verb

  Tight new shoes can pinch your toes after a long walk.

• noun

  Add just a pinch of salt to balance the sauce.

• verb

  Be careful not to pinch your skin when you close the laptop lid.

• noun

  The recipe calls for a pinch of ground nutmeg.

Where does pinch come from?

Language of origin: French

Pinch came into English in the medieval period from Anglo-Norman and Old North French pinchier, a regional variant of Old French pincier, meaning 'to squeeze' or 'to nip'. The deeper source is genuinely uncertain: many scholars connect it to a Vulgar Latin form pinciare, while others suspect an imitative or Germanic origin, so the trail goes cold before Latin. By the 1200s and 1300s the verb was firmly established in English for gripping something tightly between finger and thumb. From that physical squeezing came the figurative senses we still use, such as a 'pinch' of salt (the amount you can grip) and feeling the 'pinch' of hard times. The everyday slang meanings 'to steal' and 'to arrest' grew up later, both playing on the idea of a quick, tight grab.

How the word is built

• pinch (single morpheme; no prefix or suffix, from Old French pincier 'to squeeze')