hinge /ˈhɪnd͡ʒ/noun 9verb 5forms 4phrases 1 noun9 •A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement. — 1826 •A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.The pedicel of the pollinium is articulated as before by a hinge to the disc; it can move freely only in one direction owing to one end of the disc being upturned. — 1862 •A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.This argument was the hinge on which the question turned. •A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album. •In polyamory, a person connected emotionally or sexually to two others who are not connected to each other. •The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution. •A movement that presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account. •One of the four cardinal points, east, west, north, or south.If when the Moon is in the Hinge at East, / The Birth breaks forward from its native rest; / Full Eighty Years, if you two Years abate, / This Station gives, and long defers its Fate — 1697 •(dialect) To be in poor health; to be out of sorts. verb5 •To attach by, or equip with a hinge. •To depend on something. •To move or already be positioned in such a fashion that it presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account. •The breaking off of the distal end of a knapped stone flake whose presumed course across the face of the stone core was truncated prematurely, leaving not a feathered distal end but instead the scar of a nearly perpendicular break.The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core. •(no longer used) To bend.Be thou a Flatterer now, and seeke to thriue / By that which ha's^([sic – meaning has]) vndone thee; hindge thy knee, / And let his very breath whom thou'lt obserue / Blow off thy Cap: [...] — 1605 formshinged · hingeing · hinging · hinges Phrases with hinge hinge onTo depend on; to be contingent upon.