hinge

[Icel. hengja =to hang (q. v.), because the door hangs on the hinge.] I. Lit .: A means of connecting a door, casement, or leaf with its frame or an object, so that it will swing thereon; a hook or joint on which a door or lid turns. "His entrance doors from off the hinges shook." Drayton: The Miseries of Queen Margaret. II. Figuratively : 1. The joint of a bivalve shell. 2. That point or principle on which anything depends or turns; the governing or ruling principle, or point; the cardinal point. "The great hinge , which opened the door to the most important alteration."- Mickle : Life of Camoens. *3. One of the cardinal points, aseast, west, north, or south. ( Cardinal is from Lat. car do (gen. car Hin-dî, s . [Native name=a Hindu, the language so called, from Hind =India.] The language spoken in the valley of the Ganges and its tributaries, from the watershed of the Jamna, as far down as Raj. din is ) =a hinge.) mahal. It is the legitimate heir of the Sanscrit, and fills that place in the modern Indian system which Sanscrit filled in the old. Under the general head of Hindi are included many dialects. It probably had its origin in the country round Delhi. It is the Indian language which most nearly ap- Mech.: A screw cut on a solid whose sides are arcs of the pitch circle of a wheel into which the screw is intended to work; so called from being in vented by Mr. Hindley, of York, England.