Crossword clues for pinion
pinion
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pinion \Pin"ion\, n. (Zo["o]l.) A moth of the genus Lithophane, as Lithophane antennata, whose larva bores large holes in young peaches and apples.
Pinion \Pin"ion\, n. [OF. pignon a pen, F., gable, pinion (in sense 5); cf. Sp. pi[~n]on pinion; fr. L. pinna pinnacle, feather, wing. See Pin a peg, and cf. Pen a feather, Pennat, Pennon.]
A feather; a quill.
--Shak.-
A wing, literal or figurative.
Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome.
--Pope. The joint of bird's wing most remote from the body.
--Johnson.A fetter for the arm.
--Ainsworth.-
(Mech.) A cogwheel with a small number of teeth, or leaves, adapted to engage with a larger wheel, or rack (see Rack); esp., such a wheel having its leaves formed of the substance of the arbor or spindle which is its axis.
Lantern pinion. See under Lantern.
Pinion wire, wire fluted longitudinally, for making the pinions of clocks and watches. It is formed by being drawn through holes of the shape required for the leaves or teeth of the pinions.
Pinion \Pin"ion\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pinioned; p. pr. & vb. n. Pinioning.]
To bind or confine the wings of; to confine by binding the wings.
--Bacon.To disable by cutting off the pinion joint.
--Johnson.-
To disable or restrain, as a person, by binding the arms, esp. by binding the arms to the body.
--Shak.Her elbows pinioned close upon her hips.
--Cowper. Hence, generally, to confine; to bind; to tie up. ``Pinioned up by formal rules of state.''
--Norris.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"wing joint, segment of a bird's wing," mid-15c., from Old French pignon "wing-feather, wing, pinion" (c.1400), from Vulgar Latin *pinnionem (nominative *pinnio), augmentative of Latin pinna "wing" (see pin (n.)).\n
"small wheel with teeth to gear with a larger one" (as in rack and pinion), 1650s, from French pignon "pinion" (16c.), literally "gable," from Old French pignon "pointed gable, summit," from Vulgar Latin *pinnionem, augmentative of Latin pinna "battlement, pinnacle" (see pin (n.)).
"disable by binding the arms," 1550s, older in English than literal sense "cut or bind the pinions (of a bird's wing) to prevent flying" (1570s); from pinion (n.1). Related: Pinioned.
Wiktionary
Etymology 1 n. 1 A wing. 2 (context ornithology English) The joint of a bird's wing farthest from the body. 3 (context ornithology English) Any of the outermost primary feathers on a bird's wing. 4 A moth of the genus ''Lithophane''. 5 (context obsolete English) A fetter for the arm. vb. 1 (lb en with the bird or the wing as the object) To cut off the pinion of a bird’s wing, or otherwise disable or bind its wings, in order to prevent it from flying. 2 (lb en with the person or the arms as the object) To bind the arms of any one, so as to deprive him of their use; to disable by so binding; to shackle. Etymology 2
n. The smallest gear in a gear drive train.
WordNet
n. a gear with a small number of teeth designed to mesh with a larger wheel or rack
any of the larger wing or tail feathers of a bird [syn: flight feather, quill, quill feather]
wing of a bird [syn: pennon]
v. bind the arms of [syn: shackle]
cut the wings off (of birds)
Wikipedia
Pinion may refer to:
- Pinion, the smallest gear in a gear drive train
- "Pinion", a song by Nine Inch Nails from the 1992 EP Broken
- Pinyon (or pinion, piñon) pine group
- Pinions, the outermost primary flight feathers on a bird's wing
- Pinioning, the act of surgically removing a bird's pinion joint
A pinion is a round gear used in several applications:
- usually the smaller gear in a gear drive train, although in the case of John Blenkinsop's Salamanca, the pinion was rather large. In many cases, such as remote controlled toys, the pinion is also the drive gear.
- the smaller gear that drives in a 90-degree angle towards a crown gear in a differential drive.
- the small front sprocket on a chain driven motorcycle.
- the round gear that engages and drives a rack in a rack and pinion mechanism and against a rack in a rack railway.
- in the case of radio-controlled cars with an engine (i.e. nitro) this pinion gear can be referred to as a clutch bell when it is paired with a centrifugal clutch.
Usage examples of "pinion".
Argo was borne over the sea swiftly, even as a hawk soaring high through the air commits to the breeze its outspread wings and is borne on swiftly, nor swerves in its flight, poising in the clear sky with quiet pinions.
The noise of the canvas on high resembled the stirring of pinions, and the cheep of a block, the grind of a parrel, helped the illusion, as though the sounds were the voices of huge birds restlessly beating their pinions aloft.
And when I dismounted from the wind and in the Sanhedrim my pinions were shorn, even then my ribs, my featherless wings, kept and guarded the song.
I told thee, Theos,--women are butterflies, hovering hither and thither on uneasy pinions, uncertain of their own desires.
Wart sat down again on the floor, and Archimedes resumed his toilet, pulling his pinions and tail feathers through his beak to smooth the barbs together.
I got the idiotic notion that it was happily digesting a mess of cogs, pinions and wheels.
Moebius cubes that had transported the ergs, the parked skimmer, the kitchen and laundry annexes next to the tower, part of the old chemistry building on the Endymion campus, several stone dwellings, precisely half of the bridge over the Pinion River, and a few million metric tons of rock and subsoil.
Impaled through the throat, Star-Admiral Iin Mennus was flung violently back until he struck the wall, pinioned there as the hyperex-cited ions boiled his blood to paste.
The aerial cavalry took wing in a thundering of hooves and a rush of great pinions, with neither Deirdre nor Lord Parseval waving a farewell.
Then she would have to turn her attention to the five sturdy spindles in the back of the chair to free the upper chain, and not even a carnival contortionist born with rubber bones could get at them with a saw while pinioned as Chyna was.
Before Hook finished his story, the eyes of the stickman began to glow, and suddenly the table shook as he tried to escape the bands of strong tape that had been wrapped all around him, pinioning his arms to his sides, immobilizing his legs.
He took up from his desk the unopened telegram, and also the flimsy sheet of paper that was pinioned down under the huge iron nut and deposited both carefully in the top drawer of his desk.
Shoz-Dijiji saw that a not overlarge tree had fallen upon the woodchopper, pinioning him in such a way that he could not release himself.
As for Fathom, his affliction was unutterable, when he found himself discovered in that situation, and made prisoner by the two assistants, who had pinioned him in such a manner, that he could not stir, much less accomplish an escape.
Brandishing lengths of thick pipe, they held Audie pinioned between them.