Pin

Pin - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

PIN, n. [L. penna,pinna.]

1. A small pointed instrument made of brass wire and headed; used chiefly by females for fastening their clothes.

2. A piece of wood or metal sharpened or pointed,used to fasten together boards,plank or other timber. The larger pins of metal are usually called bolts,and the wooden pins used in ship building are called treenails [trunnels.] A small wooden pin is called a peg.

3. A thing of little value. It is not a pin's matter. I care not a pin.

4. A linchpin.

5. The central part.

6. A peg used in musical instruments in straining and relaxing the strings.

7. A note or strain.

8. A horny induration of the membranes of the eye.

9. A cylindrical roller made of wood.

10. A noxious humor in a hawk's foot.

11. The pin of a block is the axis of the sheave.

PIN, v.t. To fasten with a pin or with pins of any kind; as, to pin the clothes; to pin boards or timbers.

1. To fasten; to make fast; or to join and fasten together.

Our gates--we have but pinned with rushes.

She lifted the princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing, as if she would pin her to her heart.

2. To inclose; to confine. [See the verbs Pen and Pound.]

(yathedh, from yathadh, "to drive in a peg"(?)): A cylindrical piece of wood or metal (e.g. brass, Ex 27:19) such as that used by weavers in beating up the woof in the loom (Jud 16:14, where Delilah fastened Samson's hair with the "pin"); or as a peg for hanging (Eze 15:3; compare Isa 22:23 f; Ezr 9:8); or as a tent-pin, such as those used in the tabernacle (Ex 27:19; 35:18; 38:20,31; 39:40; Nu 3:37; 4:32; Jud 4:21, where the King James Version translates "nail," the Revised Version (British and American) "tent-pin"; compare Jud 5:26, where Hebrew has the same word, English Versions of the Bible "nail"). The tent-pin, like that of today, was probably sharpened at one end (Jud 4:21) and so shaped at the other as to permit the attaching of the cords so frequently mentioned in the same connection (Ex 35:18; 39:40; Nu 3:37; 4:32; compare Isa 33:20). From the acts of driving in the tent-pin (Taqa`) and pulling it out (nasa') are derived the technical Hebrew terms for pitching a tent and for breaking camp.

See also CRISPING PINS (Isa 3:22, the Revised Version (British and American) "satchels"); STAKE.

Nathan Isaacs