Also 7 keenk, 8 kenk. [prob. a. Du. kink twist, twirl, = G. kink, kinke, Da., Sw. kink, app. from a root *kink-, *kik-, to bend, twist; cf. Icel. kikna to bend at the knees, keikr bent back.]
1. A short twist or curl in a rope, thread, hair, wire, or the like, at which it is bent upon itself; esp. when stiff so as to catch or cause obstruction. (Orig. nautical.) Also transf. of a ‘crick’ or stiffness in the neck, etc.
1678. Phillips (ed. 4), App., Keenk (in Navigation), is when a Rope which should run smooth in the Block, hath got a little turn, and runs as it were double.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1789), Kink, a sort of twist or turn in any … rope, occasioned by it’s being very stiff or close-laid; or by being drawn too hastily out of the roll.
1778. Nairne, in Phil. Trans., LXVIII. 834. Where there happened to be kenks in the wire.
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Kink, an entanglement in a skein.
1833. Marryat, P. Simple, xx. Your back with a bow like a kink in a cable.
1851. H. Melville, Moby-Dick, iii. 22. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.
1893. G. D. Leslie, Lett. Marco, xxv. 167. The clematis, tomato, and some others, form kinks in their leaf-stems, which secure the plants very effectively.
1894. Bottone, Electr. Instr. Making (ed. 6), 125. Care should be taken to wind this wire evenly, closely, and without kinks.
2. fig. a. A mental twist; an odd or fantastic notion; a crotchet, whim. b. An odd but clever method of doing something; a ‘dodge,’ ‘wrinkle.’
18[?]. Carlton, New Purchase (Bartlett). It is useless to persuade him to go, for he has taken a kink in his head that he will not.
1848. Major Jones’s Courtship, 20 (ibid.). I went down to Macon to the zamination, whar I got a heap of new kinks.
1876. W. Cory, Lett. & Jrnls. (1897), 414. I have done a little towards bringing up young people without kinks.
1889. T. E. Hibben, in Anthony’s Photogr. Bull., II. 110. The hundred and one recent valuable wrinkles, dodges and kinks that float through the photographic press.
