Fin sb.

Forms: 1 finn, 3–7 finne, (7 finn), 4–5 fyn(ne, (south. vyn(ne), 7– fin. Also 7 phin. [OE. finn str. masc., cognate with the synonymous MDu. vinne (mod.Du. vin) fem., MLG. finne fem.; the mod.Ger. finne is prob. adopted from LG. The L. pinna fin is prob. the same word.]

  1.  An organ attached to various parts of the body in fishes and cetaceans, which serves for propelling and steering in the water. With prefixed adj., as anal, caudal, dorsal, pectoral, ventral, etc., indicating the part to which the organ is attached. Applied also to similar organs in other animals, as the flipper of a seal, the modified wing of a penguin, etc.

c. 1000.  Ælfric, Lev. xi. 9. Ne ete ȝe nanne fisc buton þa þe habbaþ finnas & scilla.

a. 1225.  St. Marher., 9. Þe fisches þat i þe flodes fleoteð wið finnes.

c. 1300.  K. Alis., 6591.

c. 1400.  Rom. Rose, 7008.

c. 1450.  Two Cookery-bks., 104. Take a Sturgeon, and kut of the vyn fro the tayle to þe hede, on þe bakke.

1599.  Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 107. The which fish had on euery side a wing, and toward the taile two other lesser as it were finnes.

1671.  Milton, P. R., II. 345.

1699.  W. Hacke, Collect. Orig. Voy., II. 62. To call them [Pengwins] Fowls I think improper, because they have neither Feathers nor Wings, but only two Fins, or Flaps, wherewith they are helped to swim.

1802.  Paley, Nat. Theol., xii. (1803) 253. Of the large headed fish, if you cut off the pectoral fins, i. e. the pair which lies close behind the gills, the head falls prone to the bottom.

1883.  W. H. Flower, in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), XV. 395/1. Balænoptera [has] a small falcate dorsal fin.

  b.  (Fish) of every fin: = of every species. Cf. FEATHER.

1725.  Pope, Odyss., XIX. 134.

  c.  A finned animal; a fish.

1549.  Latimer, 6th Serm. bef. Edw. VI. (Arb.), 178. Wee haue laboured all nighte, and haue not caught one fynne.

1881.  Leicestersh. Gloss., ‘Theer ’asn’t a fin i’ the stank.’

1893.  Daily News, 15 Dec., 5/3. It is to be hoped that Mr. Watson will add fins to fur and feathers.

  † d.  Phrase, to put out one’s fins: fig. ? to bestir oneself eagerly.

1461.  Marg. Paston, in Lett., No. 369. I. 544. And now he and alle his olde felaweship put owt their fynnes, and arn ryght flygge and mery.

  2.  Something resembling a fish’s fin.

  a.  jocularly. The arm and hand (of a man), or simply the hand.

1785.  Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue, Fin, an arm.

1801.  Nelson, in A. Duncan, Life (1806), 140. ‘I am Lord Nelson,’ replied the hero, ‘see, here’s my fin,’—at the same time throwing aside his green dreadnaught, shewing the stump of his right arm, and exposing his three stars.

1855.  Smedley, H. Coverdale, ii. 12. Markum, lend us a fin, old man, for I feels precious staggery-like, I can tell you.

Mod.  (slang). Tip us your fin (= shake hands).

  † b.  The lid (of the eye). Obs.

1604.  Marston, Malcontent, I. iii. Here’s a knight … shall … ride at the ring, till the fin of his eyes look as blue as the welkin.

1623.  Webster, Duchess of Malfy, II. i.

  c.  The baleen of a whale (? obs.). Hence, a blade or thin strip of whalebone.

1634.  T. Johnson, Parey’s Chirurg., XXV. xxi. 1013. The finnes that stand forth of their [whales’] mouths, which are commonly called Whale-bones, being dried and polished, serve to make busks for women, whip-staves, and little staves, as also to stiffen garments.

1706.  Lond. Gaz., No. 4238/4. Cut-Whalebone … in Fins.

1858.  Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Fin … the trade name for a blade of whalebone: sharks’ fins enter into eastern commerce dried, being eaten as food.

  3.  A projecting part.

  † a.  A lobe of the liver or lungs. Obs. rare.

1615.  Crooke, Body of Man, 131. In bruite beasts it [the LiuerJ is diuided into foure, fiue, or six Lobes or Finnes. Ibid., 385. Each Lung is diuided into two Lobes or Finnes.

  b.  A sharp lateral projection on the share or the coulter of a plough.

1653.  Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr., 197. Alway be carefull in keeping your Irons sharp, and clean wrough, your Coulter edge thin ground, and Share phin as sharp as may be.

1677.  [see CHEP].

1717.  Dict. Rust., s.v. Plough, Some set on the right side of the Coulter a small Wing or Fin, which cuts in two the bottom of the Roots.

1759.  trans. Duhamel’s Husb., I. viii. (1762), 44. A hollow plow-share … has a fin both ways; which fins must also begin at the point.

1807.  Vancouver, Agric. Devon (1813), 115. When the land is designed to be ploughed clean, and to a good full pitch, a long pointed share, with a small fin or wing, is used.

  c.  Mech. (see quots.).

1874.  Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 846/2. Fin. 2. A slip inserted longitudinally into a shaft or arbor, and left projecting so as to form a guide for an object which may slip thereon, but not rotate. Ibid., I. 847/1. Fin. 3. A tongue on the edge of a board.

1876.  Aitken, Guns (Brit. Manuf. Industr.), 21. Presses fitted up with cutting-out tools, punch out, trim, and relieve the stampings from the superfluous metal, or ‘fins’ left after stamping.

  4.  dial. The herb restharrow. Also fin-weed.

1649.  Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr., xviii. (1652), 119. They beare plenty of wilde Time, Mous-eare, Phinns, Mosse, and Shar-grasse.

1790.  W. Marshall, Midl. Count., Gloss., Fin, anonis arvensis, rest-harrow.

1821.  Clare, Vill. Minstr., I. 204.

  5.  attrib. and Comb.: a. simple attributive, as fin-apparatus, -membrane; b. objective, as fin-cutting vbl. sb.; c. parasynthetic and similative, as fin-shaped, -tailed, -winged; fin-like adjs.

1847–9.  R. B. Todd, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, IV. 173/2. The connexion which exists between the *fin-apparatus and the body of Clio.

1886.  Pall Mall G., 16 Aug., 5/2. Discovering that the pike gorged our perch ravenously with and without their fins … we gave up the *fin-cutting.

1666.  Dryden, Ann. Mirab., 157.

1889.  P. H. Emerson, Eng. Idylls, 43. He stood in his boat rubbing his fin-like hands.

1874.  Wood, Nat. Hist., 569. The *fin-membranes are brown.

1835–6.  R. B. Todd, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, I. 651/2. *Fin-shaped caudal processes.

1892.  Ld. Lytton, King Poppy, Prol. 318.

1820.  Shelley, A Vision of the Sea, 149.

  6.  Special comb.: fin-back = FINNER; also attrib., as finback calf, whale; also fin-backed whale; fin-fish = FINNER; fin-foot, (a) a swimming-foot; a pleiopod; (b) a name for birds of the genera Heliornis or Podica; fin-footed a., Ornith. (a) web-footed; (b) having the toes furnished with flaps or lobes, lobate-footed; (c) ‘in Mollusca, pteropod’ (Cent. Dict.); fin-keel, a keel shaped like a dorsal fin inverted; fin-leg, the leg of an aquatic insect, used as a fin; fin-ray, one of the hard spiny or soft jointed processes that support the skin of the fins; † finscale, another name for the RUDD; fin-spine, a spine or spiny ray of a fish’s fin; fin-spined a., having spiny fins, acanthopterygious; fin-toed a. = fin-footed (b); fin-weed (see sense 4); fin-whale = FINNER.

1725.  Dudley, in Phil. Trans., XXXIII. 258. The *Finback Whale is distinguished from the right Whale, by having a great Fin on his Back.

1851.  H. Melville, Whale, xxxi. 151. The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters.

1843.  Zoologist, I. 33. *Fin-backed whale (Balænoptera boops).

1694.  Narborough in Acc. Sev. Late Voy., II. 3. A *Fin-fish swam by our Ship, which we took at first to be a Whale, before we saw the high fins of his Tail.

1787.  Hunter, in Phil. Trans., LXXVII. 375. When they [whales] are of a certain size, they are brought to us as Porpoises; when larger, they are called Grampus, or Finfish.

1843.  Zoologist, I. 34. It [a whale] is well known among fishermen and mariners generally by the names of finner, fin-back, fin-fish and gibbar.

1849.  trans. Cuvier’s Anim. Kingd., 423. Which appendages here, as in the majority of the Macroura, are used in swimming, or are *fin-feet.

1886.  Encycl. Brit., XX, 223/2. The more distant group formed by the South-American Heliornis, and the African and Indian Podica, comprising four to five species, to which the name ‘Finfoots’ has been applied.

1646.  Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., V. i. 234. It [the Pelecan] is palmipedous, or *fin-footed like Swans and Geese.

1804.  Bewick, Brit. Birds, II. 134. Linnæus and other ornithologists, however, describes it [the Common Coot] as a genus distinct from those birds, and from the waders in general, on account of its being fin-footed, and its confident attachment to the waters, which, indeed, it seldom quits.

1893.  Westm. Gaz., 21 Feb., 11/2. Boats … exhibiting all the most recent devices in bulb and *fin keels.

1843.  Zoologist, I. 57. The *fin-legs could not be well made out, on account of the minuteness of the animal.

1864.  [H. W. Wheelwright], Spring Lapl., 162. They appeared to be precisely the same, both in shape, colour, number of scales, and *finrays.

1677.  Plot, Oxfordsh., 184. A Fish of the squammous kind, which they call a *Finscale, somwhat like a Roach.

1771.  Forster, in Phil. Trans., LXI. 318 note. The fish thus named is supposed to be the same with the rud or finscale.

1876.  Page, Adv. Text-bk. Geol., xiii. 228. Detached *fin-spines known to the palæontologist as ichthyodorulites.

1674.  Ray, Collect. Eng. Words, 91. Such whose toes are divided, which I may call *Fin-toed.

1847.  Hill, in Gosse, Birds of Jamaica, 439. These stretches of blended sward and sedge are the only parts of the river fitted for a bird with fin-toed feet and short wings, to quit the water and seek the shore.

1885.  trans. S. Tromholt, Aurora Borealis, II. 283. The family of whales which have been named *‘fin’ whales, from a fin on the back.