gin

plural gins

1. countableuncountableA 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.
2. uncountableGin rummy.
3. countableuncountablecard gamesDrawing the best card or combination of cards.

   Johnny Chan held jack-nine, and hit gin when a queen-ten-eight board was dealt out.

plural gins

1. obsoleteA trick; a device or instrument.
2. obsoleteA scheme; contrivance; artifice; a figurative trap or snare.

   treason and deceiptfull gin

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

   1 more example

   The church dores were sparred, Fast boltyd and barryd, Yet wyth a prety gyn I fortuned to come in, […]

   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

3. A snare or trap for game.

   It was the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin.

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

4. 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.
5. businessA hoisting drum, usually vertical; a whim.
6. A pile driver.
7. A windpump.
8. A cotton gin.
9. An instrument of torture worked with screws.

present singular third person gins · participle present ginning · participle past ginned · past ginned

1. transitiveTo remove the seeds from cotton with a cotton gin.
2. transitiveTo trap something in a gin.

present singular third person gins · participle present ginning · past gan · participle past gun

1. EarlyModernarchaicTo 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 :[…]

   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

plural gins

1. Australiaethnicslurnow considered offensiveAn Aboriginal woman.

   But there was this gin there, see, what they called a kitchen girl.

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

   5 more examples

   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.

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

   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.

   1879 December 31, “Obituary”, in The Hobart Mercury, page 2

   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, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600641.txt 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.

   How they must have laughed about the strutting of her whose mother was a wanton and aunt a gin!

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

   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.

   1988, Tom Cole, Hell West and Crooked, Angus & Robertson, published 1995, page 179

   Synonyms: lubra

1. AppalachiaNorthern EnglandScotlandSouthern USIf.

   Wheeah, Ah thinks thee could, gin ye tried.

   1870, John Christopher Atkinson, Lost; or, What came of a slip from 'honour bright'., page 19

   5 more examples

   […]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.

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

   Gin the plough rests on the bank, / The loom, the nation, dies.

   1804, Robert Couper, Poetry, I. 196

   An' gin I'm weel and can keep sober / You may look for it in October.

   1809, Thomas Donaldson, Poems, section 76

   He's get han' and siller, / Gin he fancies me.

   1815, Robert Anderson, Ballads in the Cumberland dialect, page 152

   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.

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

plural Gins · alternative Jing

1. An ethnic Vietnamese, in reference to those whose lands are in China.

   Synonyms: Jing, Kinh