different between tuck vs pinch

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?k/
• Rhymes: -?k

Etymology 1

From Middle English tuken, touken (“to torment, to stretch (cloth)”), from Old English t?cian (“to torment, vex”) and Middle Dutch tucken (“to tuck”), both from Proto-Germanic *teuh-, *teug- (“to draw, pull”) (compare also *tukk?n?), from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to pull”). Akin to Old High German zucchen (“to snatch, tug”), zuchôn (“to jerk”), Old English t?on (“to draw, pull, train”). Doublet of touch.

Verb

tuck (third-person singular simple present tucks, present participle tucking, simple past and past participle tucked)

1. (transitive) To pull or gather up (an item of fabric). [From 14^thc.]
2. (transitive) To push into a snug position; to place somewhere safe or somewhat hidden. [From 1580s.]
3. (intransitive, often with "in" or "into") To eat; to consume. [From 1780s.]
4. (ergative) To fit neatly.

5. To curl into a ball; to fold up and hold one's legs.

6. To sew folds; to make a tuck or tucks in.

7. To full, as cloth.
8. (LGBT, of a drag queen, trans woman, etc.) To conceal one’s penis and testicles, as with a gaff or by fastening them down with adhesive tape.

9. (when playing scales on piano keys) To keep the thumb in position while moving the rest of the hand over it to continue playing keys that are outside the thumb.
10. (aviation) Ellipsis of Mach tuck.

Antonyms

• untuck

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

tuck (plural tucks)

1. An act of tucking; a pleat or fold. [From late 14thC.]
2. (sewing) A fold in fabric that has been stitched in place from end to end, as to reduce the overall dimension of the fabric piece.
3. A curled position.
4. (medicine, surgery) A plastic surgery technique to remove excess skin.
5. (music, piano, when playing scales on piano keys) The act of keeping the thumb in position while moving the rest of the hand over it to continue playing keys that are outside the thumb.
6. (diving) A curled position, with the shins held towards the body.
7. (nautical) The afterpart of a ship, immediately under the stern or counter, where the ends of the bottom planks are collected and terminate by the tuck-rail.

Related terms

• tucker

Translations

Etymology 2

From Old French estoc (“rapier”), from Italian stocco (“a truncheon, a short sword”)

Noun

tuck (plural tucks)

1. (archaic) A rapier, a sword.
   • 1663, Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, part 1, canto 2

     [...] with force he labour'd / To free's blade from retentive scabbard; / And after many a painful pluck, / From rusty durance he bail'd tuck [...]

   • 1601, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, Act III, Scene I.

     [...] dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful, and deadly. [...]

Translations

Etymology 3

Compare tocsin.

Noun

tuck (plural tucks)

1. The beat of a drum.

Etymology 4

Old Occitan tuc (“uncooked”).

Noun

tuck (uncountable)

1. (Britain, dated, school slang) Food, especially snack food.

Derived terms

• tuck shop
• tuck box
• tuck in

Manx

Verb

tuck (verbal noun tuckal, past participle tuckit)

1. to full (cloth)

Synonyms

• walk
• giallee

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