Chiefly Sc. [app. onomatopæic, expressing the idea of nimble motion.]
1. intr. To move with quick sudden action; to move or dart with sudden turns; to move jerkily to and fro. To jink in, to make a sudden indirect or clandestine dart in.
1785. Burns, 2nd Ep. to Davie, ii. Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle; Lang may your elbock jink an’ diddle.
a. 1810. Tannahill, Poems, Midges dance aboon the burn. The merry wren, frae den to den, Gaes jinking through the thorn.
1816. Scott, Antiq., xxv. My lord couldna tak it weel your coming blinking and jinking in, in that fashion.
1834. M. Scott, Cruise Midge, xxi. Jink out of the room, will ye, for I am very drowsy.
b. To wheel or fling about in dancing; to dance.
1715. Ramsay, Christ’s Kirk Gr., II. xxiv. Was n’er in Scotland heard or seen … Sic dancing and sic jinkin’.
1804. Tarras, Poems, 12 (Jam.). Then Tullie gart ilk carlie jink it, Till caps an’ trenchers rair’t and rinkit.
1894. Crockett, Raiders, 17. Here we were, jinking hand in hand under the trees in the moonlight.
2. intr. To make a quick elusive turn, so as to dodge a pursuer or escape from a guard.
1785. Burns, Addr. to Deil, xx. But, faith! he’ll turn a corner jinkin, An’ cheat you yet. Ibid., Halloween, vi. But Rab slips out, an’ jinks about, Behint the muckle thorn.
1827. Blackw. Mag., XXI. 650. He jinks under your elbow, and starts off.
1887. Black, In Far Lochaber, ii. Then ye jink round the corner and call it by another name.
1889. R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Pigsticking, 68. He [the boar] will often make a feint of jinking to one side, and will dart off in exactly the opposite direction. Ibid. When the boar … sees the spear point being lowered in his direction…, he will ‘jink,’ or suddenly turn sharply to the right or left.
3. trans. To elude or escape by dodging; to dodge. Cf. JOUK v.2 3.
a. 1774. Fergusson, Hame Content, Poems (1788), II. 107. There the herds con jink the show’rs ’Mang thriving vines an’ myrtle bow’rs.
1889. R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Pigsticking, 180. In such a way as to cause him to jink his pursuers.
4. To trick, cheat, diddle, swindle.
1785. R. Forbes, Poems Buchan Dial., Ulysses Answ. Ajax, 15. For Jove did jink Arcesius.
1832. M. Scott, in Blackw. Mag., XXXII. 22. The gipsy, after all, jinked an old rich goutified coffee-planter.
1885. J. Runciman, Skippers & Shellbacks, 146. When they find he means to jink them.
5. intr. (Cards.) To win a game of spoil-five or forty-five by taking all the tricks in one hand.
1887. Standard Hoyle, 221. (Spoil-five), Sometimes spoils are dispensed with altogether, and the game is made a fixed number (either twenty-five or forty-five),… at Twenty-five or Forty-five who wins all five tricks wins the game. This is called jinking it. Properly the jink belongs only to these games, but sometimes by agreement jinking is allowed at Spoil-five.
