Also 6 chynne, chyne. [f. CHINE sb.2; cf. F. échiner to break the back of.]
I. Connected with the chine = backbone.
1. trans. To cut along or across the chine or backbone; to cut the chine-piece.
1611. Cotgr., Eschiner: To chyne; to diuide, or breake, the backe of.
1615. Markham, Eng. Hous-wife, 60. And the Pigge you shal chine [and] divide into two parts.
1636. Divine Tragedie lately Acted, 22. [He] with a hatchet chines him downe the backe, so as his bowells fell out.
1787. Canning, Microcosm, No. 28, ¶ 2. It is no easy task to introduce Patroclus chining; a porker.
1843. P. Parley’s Ann., IV. 331. Cutting out a pluck, or chining a whole sheep.
b. spec. To cut up (a salmon or other fish).
1513. Bk. Keruynge, in Babees Bk., 265. Chyne that samon.
1651–7. T. Barker, Art of Angling (1826), 14. You chine the Salmon.
1653. Walton, Angler, iii. Chine or slit him through the middle, as a salt fish is usually cut.
1789. Best, Angling (ed. 2), 168.
2. To break the chine or back of. (? Also, To cleave to the chine.)
1596. Spenser, F. Q., IV. vi. 13. On her horses hinder parts it [a stroke] fell … That quite it chynd his backe behind the sell.
1677. Otway, Cheats Scapin, II. i. 79. By all the Honour of my ancestors I’ll chine the villain [Fr. je le veux échiner].
1741. Richardson, Pamela, II. 250. He would chine the Man, that was his Word, who offer’d to touch his Lady.
II. Connected with chine = ridge.
3. intr. and trans. To ridge. (Only in one writer.)
1869. Blackmore, Lorna D., iii. (ed. 12), 18. The valleys [were] chined with shadow. Ibid. (1873), Cradock Nowell, xi. (1881), 44. His mighty forehead would scarp and chine like the headland when the plough turns. Ibid. (1877), Erema, I. xx. 248 (Hoppe). The cliff was of chalk…. Where it suddenly chined away from land-slope into sea-front, a long bar of shingle began.
