Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A coil or loop.
- noun Nautical A ring on a stay attached to the head of a jib or staysail.
- noun A looped bundle, as of yarn.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To fasten by means of a rope or cord: draw or compress tightly.
- [⟨ hank, n.] To form into hanks, as yarn.
- To hang.
- Same as
hanker . - noun A habit or practice.
- noun A skein or coil of yarn or thread; more particularly, a definite length of yarn, thread, silk, or the like bound up in one or more skeins. A hank of cotton yarn is 840 yards; a hank of linen yarn is 3,000 yards.
- noun A string; a tie; a clasp; a hold; a collar, chain, ring, or other means of fastening.
- noun Specifically Nautical, a ring of wood or iron (formerly of rope) fastened round a fore-and-aft stay, and having the head of a jib or stay-sail seized to it. Iron hanks are used on wire stays, and wooden ones on rope stays.
- noun A withy or rope for fastening a gate.
- noun A handle.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb Prov. Eng. To fasten with a rope, as a gate.
- transitive verb To form into hanks.
- noun A parcel consisting of two or more skeins of yarn or thread tied together.
- noun Prov. Eng. A rope or withe for fastening a gate.
- noun Hold; influence.
- noun (Naut.) A ring or eye of rope, wood, or iron, attached to the edge of a sail and running on a stay.
- noun (Wrestling) A throw in which a wrestler turns his left side to his opponent, twines his left leg about his opponent's right leg from the inside, and throws him backward.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
coil orloop of something, especiallytwine ,yarn , orrope - noun nautical A
ring orshackle that secures astaysail to itsstay and allows the sail to glide smoothly up and down. - noun Ulster
doubt ,difficulty - noun Ulster
mess ,tangle - verb transitive To form into hanks.
- verb transitive, UK, dialect To
fasten with arope , as agate .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a coil of rope or wool or yarn
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Well I sure as heck dont need "hank" with me in a bar.
Sound Politics: This could be a bar fight if Democrats get their way 2007
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My throat was sore and swollen for a day or two, and I felt so sorry for myself at times that I laughed to think how I must have looked: sitting on a stone, drinking a pan of tea without trimmings, that had got cold, and eating a shapeless lump of brown bread; my one "hank" drawn around my neck, serving as hank and bandage alternately.
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We stood on the brink of a wall, over which the stream at our side fell in a "hank" of divided cataracts.
Northern Travel Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland Bayard Taylor 1851
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1 In the notation of yarn the unit is the relation of the "hank" of 840 yards to the pound.
From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill: A Study of the Industrial Transition in North Carolina 1906
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"hank" drawn around my neck, serving as hank and bandage alternately.
In Flanders Fields and Other Poems John McCrae 1895
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Sounds similar to JJEF will reason upon 21-14 over RYE according to a twitter wire hank greebergNovember 6th, 2009 during 8: 05 pm
Archive 2009-11-01 admin 2009
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And pieces of dead men—hands, arms, a foot still wearing a boot, a hank of hair still rooted to a clump of clotted scalp.
Gideon’s war Howard Gordon 2011
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I believe you all have the rite to comment and express your opinions on this curious violation of nature, but I think none of you have the rite to judge the man personally. hank castle
Evening Buzz: Fugitive Filmmaker Arrested, Fighting Back 2009
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Is E.B. Johnson one and the same as the hank johnson – Guam will tilt fame?
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Sounds similar to JJEF will reason upon 21-14 over RYE according to a twitter wire hank greebergNovember 6th, 2009 during 8: 05 pm
No broadcasts from Section 1 finals | Varsity Insider admin 2009
reesetee commented on the word hank
Traditionally, a measure of length for yarn, which varies by market and material. In Scotland and northern England, a hank of cotton yarn measured 840 yards (768 meters); a hank of wool yarn measured 560 yards (512 meters). In the United States, though, a hank of woolen yarn was generally 1,600 yards (1,463 meters). In retail trade, a hank was often equal to 6 or 7 skeins of varying size.
November 6, 2007
yarb commented on the word hank
Apparently short for handkerchief or hankie. My first encounter with this word was on hotel laundry lists. They would be forever listing "hanks" as an item, and eventually I asked the person at the front desk what the heck a hank was. I knew that the laundry list hadn't changed since the 1970's, since it also listed slacks and sports shirts and had no box for t-shirts. The chap was as lost as I was, or pretended to be, and it was only recently, when I saw the word in Gresham's "Nightmare Alley" (see okana borra), that I twigged the obvious. For who carries a handkerchief nowadays? The custom is from the days when paper was for writing on, not snotting. Handkerchiefs smell irremediably of one's father.
June 29, 2012
ruzuzu commented on the word hank
Excellent. Another word for my handkerchiefs list.
June 29, 2012