whin – English noun declension

English noun forms of whin

Noun: whin
Singularwhin
Pluralwhins

Sample Sentences

  • 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.
  • 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 38:]

Etymology

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”). See: Middle English Nouns 'whynne', Swedish Nouns 'ven', Latin Nouns 'caenum', Latin Nouns 'inquīnō'.

Verbs referencing "whin"

Finnish Nouns vainio, Latin Nouns caenum.