sb. U.S. [ad. Sp. cincha girth, cingle.] The saddle-girth used in Mexico, and the adjacent parts of the United States, usually made of separate twisted strands of horse-hair.
1872. C. King, Mountain. Sierra Nev., vi. 119. I leaned down and felt of the cinch, to see if it had slipped forward.
1884. Joaquin Miller, Memorie & Rime, 168. Colonel Bill had just set the rowels of his great Spanish spurs in the broad cinch in order to push his horse.
Hence Cinch v. to girth tightly; also fig. to ‘put the screw on.’
1875. S. Williams, in Scribner’s Mag., July, 277/1 (Hoppe). A man who is hurt in a mining transaction is ‘cinched’ [San Francisco localism].
1884. Joaquin Miller, Memorie & Rime, 56. The gray old Californian sinched his little mule till she grunted.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., III. 239. To use an expressive Californian phrase, capital, and especially accumulated capital, wherever it was found, was to be ‘cinched.’
