quinch

English

Etymology

First attested 1530 as quynche, possibly from unrecorded Middle English *quinchen, itself of obscure origin. Perhaps a fusion of Middle English quicchen, quecchen (“to shake, tremble; twitch, flinch”) and Middle English winchen (“to flinch, wince; veer or move away”), making it equivalent to a blend of quitch +‎ winch.

Compare Saterland Frisian kwinkje (“to blink, wink with the eyes”), Middle Dutch quincken, quinken ("to shake, quiver"; whence modern Dutch kwinken, kwinkeleren (“to warble”)), German Low German quinken (“to blink, wink”).

Verb

quinch (third-person singular simple present quinches, present participle quinching, simple past and past participle quinched)

  1. (obsolete, intransitive) To stir; to act as if in pain, flinch, wince.
    • 1598, Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande‎, page 213:
      And therupon to beſtow all my Soldiers in ſuch ſort as I have done, that no part of all that Realm ſhall be able to dare to quinch […]

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “quinch”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams
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