Shin

How to spell shin

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shin

What does shin mean?

1. nounThe bony front part of the leg between the knee and the ankle.
2. verbTo climb up or down something by gripping it with the hands and legs.

Shin in a sentence

• noun

  He banged his shin on the open dishwasher door.

• verb

  The children would shin up the drainpipe to reach the roof.

• noun

  The footballer wore a guard to protect his shin.

• verb

  Sailors had to shin up the mast to free the tangled rope.

Where does shin come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a very old native English word, descending from Old English scinu, which named the front of the lower leg and the long bone running down it. The root sat within a wider Germanic family: it is a close cousin of Dutch scheen and German Schiene, the latter of which came to mean a thin strip, rail, or splint, and that older sense of a flat, narrow piece hints at the shape of the shin-bone itself. The word has stayed remarkably stable in form across more than a thousand years, which is why its spelling is mercifully plain. The verb meaning to climb a pole or rope by gripping with the legs is a much later, informal development, picturing the shins doing the work. Because it is short and phonetically regular, shin almost never trips up adult spellers.

How the word is built

• shin (whole word; from Old English scinu, the shin-bone, no affixes)