Meanings
whin1
plural whins
- countableuncountableGorse; furze (Ulex spp.).
And sometimes they clambered down […] and saw the whin bushes climb black the white hills beside them and far and away the blink of lights across the moors where folk lay happed and warm.
1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, “Sunset Song”, in A Scots Quair, Canongate Books, published 1995, page 381 more example
1790, Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter, 1828, Thomas Park (editor), Works of the British Poets, Volume XX: The Poems of Robert Burns, page 65, By this time he was cross the ford, / Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; / And past the birks and meikle stane, / Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; / And through the whins, and by the cairn, / Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; / And near the thorn, aboon the well, / Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.
- countableuncountableThe plant woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria).
whin2
Synonyms & antonyms
nounvery spiny and dense evergreen shrub with fragrant golden-yellow flowers; common throughout western Europe
nounsmall Eurasian shrub having clusters of yellow flowers that yield a dye; common as a weed in Britain and the United States; sometimes grown as an ornamental
nounany of various hard colored rocks (especially rocks consisting of chert or basalt)
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*ḱweyn-“to soil; mud; filth”
- Proto-Germanic*hwainō
- Old Norsehvein“gorse, furze”
- Middle Englishwhynne
- Englishwhin
From Middle English whynne, from Old Norse hvein (“gorse, furze”) (compare Norwegian kvein (“bent grass”), Swedish ven (“bent grass”), dialectal hven (“swamp”)), apparently from hvein (“swampy land”), from Proto-Germanic *hwainō, *hwin- (“swamp; moor”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyn- (“to soil; mud; filth”). Compare Latin caenum (“filth”), Latin inquīnō (“to sully; soil”).
More words from Middle English, Old Norse, Proto-Germanic
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with whin
All rhymes →Sounds the same
Cite this entry
whin. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whin
“whin.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whin. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “whin,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whin.
Source: whin on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.