Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The process of filling the interstices between the logs of log houses preparatory to plastering them over with clay. The double process is known as chinking and daubing.
  • noun The material used for filling chinks.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The material used to fill the spaces between logs in a log house; caulking.
  • verb Present participle of chink.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • That is what they called chinking to keep the wind and rain out.

    Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 1 Work Projects Administration

  • The chinking was a simple matter, and when it was all done, including

    The Master-Knot of Human Fate Ellis Meredith

  • She _smelt_, so to say, that there was something underneath the offer which was not to her advantage; but then the thought of thirty crowns a month, of all those coins chinking in her apron, falling to her, as it were, from the skies, without her doing anything for it, filled her with covetousness.

    The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) Boule de Suif and Other Stories Guy de Maupassant 1871

  • Mortar work between the logs, also known as chinking, would have originally been of mud and straw.

    Local News from The Dispatch | Lexington, NC 2009

  • Many a rain had beaten against the "chinking" and we had no trouble in finding openings through which we could plainly see all that went forward within.

    The Jucklins A Novel Opie Percival Read 1895

  • He caught sight of the end of little Jim Coggin's comforter flaunting out through the "chinking," -- as the mountaineers call the series of short slats which are set diagonally in the spaces between the logs of the walls, and on which the clay is thickly daubed.

    The Young Mountaineers Short Stories Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

  • They had been the "chinking" between the "mud" of slavery and the "house-logs" of aristocracy in the social structure of the South -- a little better than the mud because of the same grain and nature as the logs; but useless and nameless except as in relation to both.

    Bricks without Straw A Novel 1880

  • With a little "chinking" and the addition of a door and perhaps a window, it would have made a much more comfortable place of abode than the miserable bark structure which Godfrey had so long occupied.

    The Boy Trapper Harry Castlemon 1878

  • The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay, had a single door and, directly opposite, a window.

    The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians Ambrose Bierce 1878

  • They had been the "chinking" between the "mud" of slavery and the "house-logs" of aristocracy in the social structure of the South -- a little better than the mud because of the same grain and nature as the logs; but useless and nameless except as in relation to both.

    Bricks Without Straw Albion Winegar Tourg��e 1871

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