different between pinch vs modicum
pinch
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)
- 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.
- To squeeze between the thumb and forefinger.
- To squeeze between two objects.
- (slang, transitive) To steal, usually something inconsequential.
- Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
- (slang, transitive) To arrest or capture.
- (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
- (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
- (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
- (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
- To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
- (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.
- To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
- (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.
- 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":
Derived terms
- pinch off
- pinch out
- pinch a loaf
Translations
Noun
pinch (plural pinches)
- The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
- A close compression of anything with the fingers.
- I gave the leather of the sofa a pinch, gauging the texture.
- A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
- 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.
- 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, page 171:
- A metal bar used as a lever for lifting weights, rolling wheels, etc.
- An organic herbal smoke additive.
- (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
- 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.
- 2001, Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time:
- (slang) An arrest.
Derived terms
Descendants
- ? Japanese: ??? (pinchi)
Translations
pinch From the web:
- what pinche means
- what pinches a nerve
- what pinches the sciatic nerve
- what pincher bugs eat
- what pinched nerve causes numbness in arm
- what pinched nerve feels like
- what pinched nerve causes numbness in fingers
- what pinched nerve causes numbness in toes
modicum
English
Etymology
From Late Middle English modicum, borrowed from Latin modicum (“a little, a small amount”), a noun use of the neuter form of modicus (“moderate; restrained, temperate; reasonable”) + -cum (suffix forming neuter nouns). Modicus is derived from modus (“a measure; a bound, limit”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *med- (“to measure”)) + -icus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives).
The plural form modica is derived from Latin modica.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /?m?d?k?m/
- (General American) IPA(key): /?m?d?k?m/, /-d?-/
- Hyphenation: mod?i?cum
Noun
modicum (plural modicums or (rare) modica)
- A modest, small, or trifling amount.
- Synonyms: iota, jot, tittle; see also Thesaurus:modicum
- Antonyms: see Thesaurus:lot
Translations
References
Latin
Etymology
From modicus (“moderate, middling”)
Pronunciation
- (Classical) IPA(key): /?mo.di.kum/, [?m?d??k???]
- (Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /?mo.di.kum/, [?m??d?ikum]
Noun
modicum n (genitive modic?); second declension
- a little, a small amount
Declension
Second-declension noun (neuter).
Descendants
- English: modicum
Adjective
modicum
- nominative neuter singular of modicus
- accusative masculine singular of modicus
- accusative neuter singular of modicus
- vocative neuter singular of modicus
References
- modicum in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
modicum From the web:
- modicum meaning
- modicum what does it mean
- what does modicum of decorum mean
- what does modicum mean in spanish
- what does modicum
- what do modicum mean
- what is modicum of truth
- what is modicum synonym
you may also like
- pinch vs modicum
- yardstick vs touchstone
- disposition vs knack
- emotion vs rapture
- salacious vs sleazy
- injustice vs aspersion
- stretch vs duration
- result vs reaping
- wages vs reward
- accepted vs normal
- presence vs attitude
- tolling vs knell
- weight vs mastery
- bob vs jerk
- renovated vs altered
- service vs availability
- irregular vs unstable
- elusive vs equivocating
- prerequisite vs birthright
- enlarging vs increase