different between pinch vs compress

English

Etymology

From Middle English pinchen, from Old French *pinchier, pincer (“to pinch”), from Vulgar Latin *pinci?re (“to puncture, pinch”), from possible merger of *puncti?re (“a puncture, sting”), from Latin puncti? (“a puncture, prick”) and *picc?re (“to strike, sting”), from Frankish *pikk?n, from Proto-Germanic *pikk?n? (“to pick, peck, prick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?nt?/
• Rhymes: -?nt?

Verb

pinch (third-person singular simple present pinches, present participle pinching, simple past and past participle pinched)

1. To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.

   The children were scolded for pinching each other.

   This shoe pinches my foot.

2. To squeeze between the thumb and forefinger.
3. To squeeze between two objects.
4. (slang, transitive) To steal, usually something inconsequential.

   Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
5. (slang, transitive) To arrest or capture.
6. (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
7. (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
8. (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
9. (obsolete, intransitive) To be stingy or covetous; to live sparingly.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gower to this entry?)

   • 1788, Benjamin Franklin (attributed), Paper

     the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare

10. To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
11. (figuratively) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.

    to be pinched for money

    • c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War

      want of room […] which pincheth the whole nation

    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 2:

      The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.

12. To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
13. (obsolete) To complain or find fault.
    • 1809, Alexander Chalmers ed. The Works of the English Poets, from Cahucer to Cowper, Vol. 1, modern rendering of poem imputed to Geoffrey Chaucer, "A Ballad which Chaucer made in Praise or rather Dispraise of Women for their Doubleness":

      Therefore who so them accuse

      Of any double entencion,

      To speake, rowne, other to muse,

      To pinch at their condicion,

      All is but false collusion,

      I dare rightwell the sothe express,

      They have no better protection,

      But shrowd them vnder doubleness.

Derived terms

• pinch off
• pinch out
• pinch a loaf

Translations

Noun

pinch (plural pinches)

1. The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
2. A close compression of anything with the fingers.

   I gave the leather of the sofa a pinch, gauging the texture.

3. A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
4. An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
   • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, page 171:

     It took nerve and muscle both to carry the body out and down the stairs to the lower hall, but he damn well had to get it out of his place and away from his door, and any of those four could have done it in a pinch, and it sure was a pinch.

5. A metal bar used as a lever for lifting weights, rolling wheels, etc.
6. An organic herbal smoke additive.
7. (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
8. The narrow part connecting the two bulbs of an hourglass.
   • 2001, Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time:

     It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.

9. (slang) An arrest.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (pinchi)

Translations

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English compressen, from Old French compresser, from Late Latin compressare (“to press hard/together”), from Latin compressus, the past participle of comprim? (“to compress”), itself from com- (“together”) + prem? (“press”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: k?mpr?s', IPA^(key): /k?m?p??s/
• Rhymes: -?s

Verb

compress (third-person singular simple present compresses, present participle compressing, simple past and past participle compressed)

1. (transitive) To make smaller; to press or squeeze together, or to make something occupy a smaller space or volume.
   • June 17, 1825, Daniel Webster, Speech on the laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument

     events of centuries […] compressed within the compass of a single life

   • 1810, William Melmoth (translator), Letters of Pliny

     The same strength of expression, though more compressed, runs through his historical harangues.

2. (intransitive) To be pressed together or folded by compression into a more economic, easier format.

3. (transitive) To condense into a more economic, easier format.

4. (transitive) To abridge.

5. (technology, transitive) To make digital information smaller by encoding it using fewer bits.
6. (obsolete) To embrace sexually.
   • 1727, Alexander Pope, Metamorphoses

     This Nymph compress'd by him who rules the day,
     Whom Delphi and the Delian isle obey,
     Andræmon lov'd; and , bless'd in all those charms
     That pleas'd a God, succeeded to her arms

Synonyms

• (press together): compact, condense, pack, press, squash, squeeze; see also Thesaurus:compress
• (be pressed together): contract
• (condense, abridge): abridge, condense, shorten, truncate; see also Thesaurus:shorten

Antonyms

• (press together): expand
• (be pressed together): decontract
• (condense, abridge): expand, lengthen
• (make computing data smaller): uncompress

Derived terms

Related terms

• compression

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle French compresse, from compresse (“to compress”), from Late Latin compressare (“to press hard/together”), from Latin compressus, the past participle of comprim? (“to compress”), itself from com- (“together”) + prem? (“press”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?k?mp??s/
• (US) enPR: k?m'pr?s, IPA^(key): /?k?mp??s/

Noun

compress (plural compresses)

2. A multiply folded piece of cloth, a pouch of ice etc., used to apply to a patient's skin, cover the dressing of wounds, and placed with the aid of a bandage to apply pressure on an injury.

3. A machine for compressing.

Related terms

• compression

Translations