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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
cinch
I.noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ After that, he was on his own, but the thousand dollars was a cinch.
▪ Edith finds the cooking a cinch.
▪ He used the third to make a cinch between her hands and the chair's bottom rail.
▪ I doubted that the load could be lifted, but Leese said it would be a cinch.
▪ Making an ocean is no cinch.
▪ There was no manual with the beta version, but the package as a whole is a cinch to use.
▪ Today Astrid wore a white satiny dress with a wide gold cinch belt.
II.verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Brown hopes to cinch the deal by Monday.
▪ She had her dress cinched at the waist with a belt.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A piece of rope still cinched his neck.
▪ She had tinted blond hair, large glasses, a blue dress cinched at the waist by a wide glossy belt.
▪ The Los Angeles conference really cinched it for me.
▪ The zip gaped open an inch at his waist, which was cinched in far too tightly by a fake crocodile belt.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cinch

Cinch \Cinch\, n. [Sp. cincha, fr. L. cingere to gird.]

  1. A strong saddle girth, as of canvas. [West. U. S.]

  2. A tight grip. [Colloq.]

Cinch

Cinch \Cinch\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cinched; p. pr. & vb. n. Cinch"ing.]

  1. To put a cinch upon; to girth tightly. [Western U. S.]

  2. To get a sure hold upon; to get into a tight place, as for forcing submission. [Slang, U. S.]

Cinch

Cinch \Cinch\, v. i. To perform the action of cinching; to tighten the cinch; -- often with up. [Western U. S.]

Cinch

Cinch \Cinch\, n. [Cf. cinch a girth, a tight grip, as v., to get a sure hold upon; perh. so named from the tactics used in the game; also cf. Sp. cinco five (the five spots of the color of the trump being important cards).] A variety of auction pitch in which a draw to improve the hand is added, and the five of trumps (called right pedro) and the five of the same color (called left pedro, and ranking between the five and the four of trumps) each count five on the score. Fifty-one points make a game. Called also double pedro and high five.

Cinch

Cinch \Cinch\, v. t. In the game of cinch, to protect (a trick) by playing a higher trump than the five.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
cinch

1859, American English, "saddle-girth," from Spanish cincha "girdle," from Latin cingulum "a girdle, a swordbelt," from cingere "to surround, encircle," from PIE root *kenk- (1) "to gird, encircle" (cognates: Sanskrit kankate "binds," kanci "girdle;" Lithuanian kinkau "to harness horses"). Replaced earlier surcingle. Sense of "an easy thing" is 1898, via notion of "a sure hold" (1888).

cinch

1866, "to pull in," from cinch (n.). Figurative meaning "make certain" is from 1891, American English slang. Related: Cinched; cinching.

Wiktionary
cinch

Etymology 1 n. 1 A simple saddle girth used in Mexico. 2 (context informal English) Something that is very easy to do. 3 (context informal English) A firm hold. vb. 1 To bring to certain conclusion. 2 To tighten down. Etymology 2

n. (cx card games English) A variety of auction pitch in which a draw to improve the hand is added, and the five of trumps (called "right Pedro") and the five of the same colour (called "left Pedro", and ranking between the five and the four of trumps) are each worth five. Fifty-one points make a game. vb. (cx card games English) In the game of cinch, to protect (a trick) by playing a higher trump than the five.

WordNet
cinch
  1. n. any undertaking that is easy to do; "marketing this product will be no picnic" [syn: breeze, picnic, snap, duck soup, child's play, pushover, walkover, piece of cake]

  2. stable gear consisting of a band around a horse's belly that holds the saddle in place [syn: girth]

  3. a form of all fours in which the players bid for the privilege of naming trumps

cinch
  1. v. tie a cinch around; "cinch horses" [syn: girth]

  2. make sure of

  3. get a grip on; get mastery of

Wikipedia
Cinch (record label)

Cinch was an English record label in the 78-rpm era, publishing cheap records at or below cost, for the purpose of driving out competitors. It was anonymously run by His Master's Voice, and operated between 1913 and 1916.

Cinch (card game)

Cinch, also known as Double Pedro or High Five, is an American trick-taking card game derived from Pitch via Pedro. Developed in Denver, Colorado in the 1880s, it was soon regarded as the most important member of the All Fours family but went out of fashion with the rise of Auction Bridge. The game is primarily played by 4 players in fixed partnerships, but can also be played by 2–6 individual players.

The game uses a regular pack of 52 cards. As in Pedro, all points are awarded to the winners of the tricks containing certain cards rather than to the players who originally held them. This includes the Game point, which goes to the winner of the trump Ten. Five points each go the winner of the Right Pedro (Five of trumps) and Left Pedro (Off-Five), respectively. The game is played for, for example, 42 or 51 points, of which up to 14 can be won in a single deal.

The name Cinch comes from a Mexican word that is applied to the practice of securing the tricks that contain a Left or Right Pedro, but it was once also common to refer to the Left Pedro as the Cinch.

Usage examples of "cinch".

Oresbius cinched with shining belt who had lived in Hyle hoarding his great wealth, his estate aslope the shores of Lake Cephisus, and round him Boeotians held the fertile plain.

Its clothing was singular, to say the leasthigh-topped brogans of black leather, baggy pantaloons and baggier shirt of what looked to be a good-quality cloth in the hue of a dark-green olive, what might have been a broad sword belt cinching the waist, but no visible weapons and no armor except the close-fitting helmet.

Then slowly, comically, cursing at the inevitability caused by a broken cinch strap, the man had slid, feet caught in suddenly loose stirrups, upside-down under the dnu and into the frigid water.

And so, tighten the cinches on Rocinante, and God be with you, and wait for me here no more than three days, and if I have not come back by then, you may return to our village, and from there, as a boon and good deed for my sake, you will go to Toboso and tell my peerless lady Dulcinea that her captive knight died performing deeds that would make him worthy of being called her own.

The exact position and dimensions of the excavation were relayed to the icebreakers and the Hawkbill, then the containment booms were slowly cinched together with agonizing slowness to avoid losing any portion of the trapped surface water.

So I gathered my belongings together, cinched my hogskin belt tight about me, and went away to my own country.

Yet, despite the plethora of adventures he conjured up, cinching on a gunbelt and seating an Ingram Mac -11 submachinegun in the holster while high up in the Lorica Corporate Citadel at 1 in the morning had not been one of them.

In preparation for sleep Mama Nilla had exchanged her pink working coveralls for a set of flowered pajamas cinched in around her ample waist.

Zembac Pix descended delicately from the scrap of rug bound with a rope cinch which served him for a saddle, and was momentarily seized with a spasmodic contraction of the glottis which impeded his speech and may possibly have been responsible as well for the slight instability of his gait.

Cinched by solidifying putridity to the left side of the Drounge, the luckless biped found itself dragged helplessly forward.

That was what made the San Roble set-up such a cinch for a smart band of crooks.

Taking his saddle and pad from one horse, Ty threw it onto a buckskin and pulled the surcingle through the cinch ring.

With thoughts such as those in mind, Longarm dropped the stirrup back onto its leathers without tightening his cinch, and instead untied the burlap sack the agency sutler gave him to hold his purchases.

The Lemon Drop Kid goes on to state that when he arrives at the track he has fifty bobs pinned to his wishbone to bet on this certain horse, but unfortunately he gets a tip on a real good thing in the very first race, and bets his fifty bobs right then and there, figuring to provide himself with a larger taw to bet on the certain horse in the fifth, but the real good thing receives practically a criminal ride from a jock who does not know one end of a horse from the other, and is beat a very dirty snoot, and there The Lemon Drop Kid is with the fifth race coming up, and an absolute cinch in it, the way his tale goes, but with no dough left to bet on it.

Chase hooked the stirrup over the saddle horn, lisgening to whatever Sam was saying as he tightened the cinch.