A twist, a knot; a crotchet; a device; an entanglement. Apparently of Sc. origin.
16[?]. At which the factor takes a kink of laughing.—Robert Wodrow, ‘Analecta,’ i. 265 (1842).
1812. Adair too had his kink. He believed all the Indians of America to be descended from the Jews.—Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 11, from Monticello.
1825. I was only shifting the collar, sir. It galls the poor dog; see!—see! We’ll have him sent over to the blacksmith’s. Lay hold, father, lay hold—perhaps we can get out the kink.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 397.
1825. There! there!—that’s a new kink!—I told you so!—Id., iii. 291.
1839. If there is a sufficiency [of material for porkers], it is known by an extra kink of the tail.—Farmer’s Monthly Visitor, i. 12 (Concord, N.H.).
1843. It is useless to persuade him to go, for he has taken a kink in his head that he will not.—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase’ (Bartlett).
1845.
| O! think! think! think | |
| What a wonderful kink | |
| The Gentiles have got in! | |
The Prophet, N.Y., March 29. |
1846. Steamer St. Anthony. This new boat is coming out with several new “kinks” about her, as the river men say.—St. Louis Reveille, May 18.
1848. Come! wake up, and shake the kinks out of your land legs, you young sodger!—Yale Lit. Mag., xiv. 82 (Dec.).
1853. Our minds are cramped by the study of these old mummy languages, and if they get a kink in the training they can never be straightened.—Id., xix. 9 (Oct.).
1855.
| Never a Yankee was born or bred | |
| Without that peculiar kink in his head | |
| By which he could turn the smallest amount | |
| Of whatever he had to the best account. | |
F. S. Cozzens, ‘Captain Davis: A Californian Ballad,’ Knickerbocker Magazine, xlv. 338 (April). |
1857. You were as well as I am, excepting that kink in your head about your going to die.—S. H. Hammond, ‘Wild Northern Scenes,’ p. 65.
1857. When he straightens up, and takes the kinks out of him, he stands six feet and over in his stockings, and his arms hang down to his knees.—Id., p. 93.
1862. I told the Kernel that when he got niggers to immigrate, that the next thing he could do would be to get the kinks out of their hair.—Seba Smith, ‘Letters of Major Jack Downing,’ Aug. 14.
1863. [Powdering the hair is] a capital kink for red-haired, mouse-colored, and greyish-haired girls to take advantage of.—Rocky Mountain News, Denver, March 19.
1869. The fact is, when a woman gits a kink in her head agin a man, the best on us don’t allers do jest the right thing.—Mrs. Stowe, ‘Oldtown Fireside Stories’ (‘Sullivan Looking-glass’).
1872. I mistrust she thought the wind would take the kink out of her frizzles.—Marietta Holley, ‘My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s,’ p. 273 (Bartlett).
1877. There is another financial kink, in case of the bonds of St. Charles County.—N.Y. Evening Post, April 16 (the same).
1888. Activity in the pursuit of pleasure soon set the little kinks free [on the negroes’ heads], and each hair stood on tip-toe, joining in a jig of its own.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 235.
a. 1894. “They kin see,” interposed Mrs. Hoover, “that she ’s not a nigger, for her hair don’t ‘kink,’ and a furrin Injin, of course, is different from one o’ our own.”—F. Bret Harte, ‘A Pupil of Chestnut Ridge.’
