From Blink to Wink: Part 2

I'm So Tired

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink, 

I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink. 

I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink. 

These lines form the first three lines of The Beatles famous song "I'm So Tired" released in November of 1968. It's a fitting introduction to this post because it features three rhyming words: wink, blink and drink and this post is all about rhymes.

In Part 1, my previous post, I looked at the following words that rhyme with ink:

bink, blink, brink, chink, cinque, clink, dink, drink, fink, gink, hink

What remains are: 

inc, jink, kink, klink, link, mink, pink, plink, rink, shrink, sink, skink, slink, spink, stink, swink, sync, think, twink, wink, zinc, zink, zinke

Words in bold are more common and Rhyme Desk provides definitions for these. In Part 2, I'll work through some of the remaining words.

inc.: this is an abbreviation for Incorporated : used in the US after the name of a company organised as a legal corporation (a particular type of company) as in "Time Inc. announced it would launch a Greek version of two of its magazines" or "Developer enthusiasm for Apple Inc. increases before every new product launch". 

The term can be used less formally and applied to any enterprise that is well-organised and profit-driven as in "John and his friend Ivan decided to call their tech startup JON-I-VAN-INC.".

The abbreviation can be pronounced in full but it's common enough to say just inc, pronounced in the same way as ink. In Internet slang, INC means incoming as in an attack is imminent in the world of gaming. It can also be an abbreviation for including.

There is a good summary of the various meanings of inc. at the site shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1: site URL

Part of what is on this site is shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: site URL

jink: now what on Earth does this word mean? Turns out that it's quite a useful word meaning, as a verb, to change direction suddenly and nimbly, as when dodging a pursuer e.g. "she was too quick for him and jinked away every time". As a noun it means a sudden quick change of direction as in "people remember him for his runs on the wing, his jinks". Figure 3 shows its use in a military sense.

Figure 3

As a verb in "to jink" it can mean to jingle or to chink as in "the money jinked". As a noun, it can mean the sharp jingle of coins. In its plural form, in the phrase "high jinks", it means boisterous fun as in "high jinks behind the wheel of a car".

kink: this word is far more common and means, as a noun, a sharp twist or curve in something that is otherwise straight as in "a kink in the road". It can also refer to a stiffness in the neck, back, etc.; a crick as in "it takes the kinks out of stiff necks". As a verb it means to form or cause to form a sharp twist or curve as in "the river kinks violently in a right angle".

However, the word has usage far beyond that listed in the previous paragraph. Here is an interesting article, titled kink, from Wikipedia:

In human sexuality, kinkiness is the use of non-conventional sexual practices, concepts or fantasies. The term derives from the idea of a "bend" (cf. a "kink") in one's sexual behaviour, to contrast such behaviour with "straight" or "vanilla" sexual mores and proclivities. It is thus a colloquial term for non-normative sexual behaviour. 

The term "kink" has been claimed by some who practice sexual fetishism as a term or synonym for their practices, indicating a range of sexual and sexualistic practices from playful to sexual objectification and certain paraphilias. In the 21st century the term "kink", along with expressions like BDSM, leather and fetish, has become more commonly used than the term paraphilia. Some universities also feature student organisations focused on kink, within the context of wider LGBTI concerns. Psychologist Margie Nichols describes kink as one of the "variations that make up the 'Q' in LGBTQ".

Kink sexual practices go beyond what are considered conventional sexual practices as a means of heightening the intimacy between sexual partners. Some draw a distinction between kink and fetishism, defining the former as enhancing partner intimacy, and the latter as replacing it. Because of its relation to conformist sexual boundaries, which themselves vary by time and place, the definition of what is and is not kink varies widely as well.

In a study published in 2016 it was found that nearly half of respondents reported an interest in some form of kink activity and about a third had experienced a kink practice at least once.

Of course the associated adjective kinky is widely used in this context. 

Link to Guardian Article

klink: the clink is a term for jail or prison and one sense of klink is as a spelling variant of that. I've dealt with clink in my previous post. Apart from this meaning, the use of Klink as a surname is strongly associated with Colonel Klink, a character played by the actor Werner Klemperer. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article about him:

He is best known, however, as Colonel Wilhelm Klink: the bungling, cowardly, conceited, and self-serving Kommandant of Stalag 13 on Hogan's Heroes, which was broadcast on CBS from 1965–1971. Klemperer, conscious that he would be playing the role of a German officer during the Nazi regime, accepted the part only on the condition that Klink would be portrayed as a fool who never succeeded. According to co-star Richard Dawson, Klemperer supplied his own uniforms. When Klemperer's father, the famous conductor Otto Klemperer, saw his first episode of Hogan's Heroes, he said to his son, "Your work is good, but who is the author of this material?" In addition to the character's bumblings, Klink was also remembered for his excruciatingly bad violin playing. For his performance as Klink, Klemperer received six Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actor, winning successive awards in 1968 and 1969.

According to this site, Klink is the 28,356th most common surname in the world with approximately 18,944 people bearing this surname. It means a dweller near a rushing stream or ravine; a dweller near a field gate; a dweller near a corner; a dweller on, or near, a low hill.

Apparently it is also used a derogatory term for a member of Klingon race, made famous by the Star Trek television series and movies.

link: the meaning of this word needs no explanation but it's occurrence in many common phrases is worthy of note. One of the most common phrases is the proverbial weak link.

Another common phrase is the missing link. To quote from this source:

The word "missing" is from Old English "missan" of Germanic origin to describe something that is not present, while "link" is from the early 15th century, likely from Old Norse, to describe a series of rings or loops in a chain. The phrase missing link is first attested in 1851 in Lyell.

A missing link refers to an omitted or unknown detail that is necessary in order to fully comprehend an issue or subject. The missing link is also used as a non-scientific term to describe a transitional fossil or species connected to the process of evolution. It is used to represent a hypothetical intermediate evolutionary form connecting animal species and its presumed ancestors.

In chemistry and biology, a cross-link is a bond that links one polymer chain to another. These links may take the form of covalent bonds or ionic bonds and the polymers can be either synthetic polymers or natural polymers. 

Image Source

Internet links are ubiquitous and so this probable the context in which the word link is used most often.

Companies involved in Internet communication are found of incorporating the word into their brand names e.g. D-Link.

mink: a small animal with valuable fur that is used to make expensive coats, or the fur from this animal as in "Mink coats were once upon a time a fashion accessory". Even these much exploited animals have not escaped the Covid-19 hysteria as Figure 4 shows.

Figure 4: source

The article begins:

There was shock last week when Denmark decided to cull all its mink - up to 17 million animals - because of the spread of coronavirus. That national cull has turned into a political outcry, now that the prime minister has admitted the plan was rushed and had no legal basis. Danish authorities worry that a mutated form of coronavirus found in mink could potentially hamper the effectiveness of a future vaccine.

I don't really have anything more to say after that.

pink: there are lots of interesting phrases involving the word "pink" including:

• to be in the pink meaning to be in very good health or condition. The phrase "in the pink" is often followed by "of health" or "of condition" as in "Jill is happy to be in the pink again after her hospital stay", "Yes, I was sick a few weeks ago, but I'm in the pink of health now" and "After that long downturn, the economy is finally back in the pink."
  
  
• to see pink elephants meaning to hallucinate or see things incorrectly due to acute alcohol intoxication or withdrawal. The phrase became especially popularised by the 1941 Disney animated film Dumbo, in which the title character accidentally becomes drunk and sees a parade of pink elephant hallucinations. Examples of its use include "My dad said that he saw pink elephants for a while after he gave up drinking" and "When I started seeing pink elephants, I knew I had to stop drinking so much."
  
  
• to have a pink fit meaning to become extremely angry. Primarily heard in UK. An example of its use would be "Don't have a pink fit—I wasn't trying to insult you."
  
  
• to be tickled pink meaning to be greatly pleased as in "Thank you so much for this. I know that it will tickle Tom pink to get a jersey signed by his favourite quarterback" and "My family loves my girlfriend almost as much as I do, so it tickled them pink to hear that we're getting married."

These explanations are taken from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pink.

plink: this onomatopoeic word can mean, as a verb, to emit a short, sharp, metallic or ringing sound as in "the sounds echoed and plinked like bells". As a noun, it means a short, sharp, metallic or ringing sound as in "there was a plink, the sound of an aluminium bat hitting the ball". 

Plink Sport Knock Down Targets

According to the dictionary.com, it can also mean, as an intransitive verb, to shoot, as with a rifle, at targets selected at whim as in "to plink at coins tossed in the air". As a transitive verb, it can mean to shoot at for practice or amusement, as with a rifle as in "to plink bottles set along a fence railing".

rink: this is a smooth expanse of ice for ice-skating, often artificially prepared and inside a building or arena; a smooth floor, usually of wood, for roller-skating; a building or enclosure for ice-skating or roller-skating; skating arena; an area of ice marked off for the game of curling; a section of a bowling green where a match can be played; a set of players on one side in a lawn-bowling or curling match.

shrink: as a verb, the words means to become or make smaller in size or amount as in "the workforce has shrunk to less than a thousand" or to move back or away, especially because of fear or disgust as in "she shrank away from him, covering her face". 

As a noun, it can refer to a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychotherapist as in "you should see a shrink". 

To quote from https://www.waywordradio.org/psychiatrist-shrinks/:

Why is a psychiatrist called a shrink?

Why are psychiatrists and psychologists called shrinks? It's a jocular reference to the ritual practice in certain tribal societies of literally shrinking the heads of one's vanquished enemies. The term shrink was adopted as a joking reference to psychotherapists in the 1960s.

One commonly used expressions involving a derivative of the word "shrink" is that of a shrinking violet meaning an exaggeratedly shy person as in "Dorothy is no shrinking violet when it comes to expressing her views".

sink: the widely used word "sink", as a noun, has an interesting etymology:

Basins… have been around since the beginning of civilisation – an indentation in rock served as a washbasin for our forefathers. Our English word basin comes from the old French word baçon, meaning shallow vessel or dish. Those basins were just basins and didn’t have a drain or plug or other conveniences. What we call sinks are in fact ‘basins’ from which the water ‘sinks’. The term sink likely comes from the old English term ‘sincan’ – to become submerged, go under, or subside. Originally it referred to the place to where the contents of your basin would sink. Source.

The most famous of all sinks is the kitchen sink of course and the phrase everything but the kitchen sink means almost everything that one can think of, everything imaginable, a very large number of things, whether needed or not, much more than the necessary number of things. 

“Stop being chained to the kitchen sink” was a term often used by the feminists of the 1970s to inspire women to step out of the home and into the workplace as in "the traditional view of women as dedicated housewives tied to the kitchen sink is all but extinct".

In the field of the arts, kitchen-sink refers to those art forms characterised by great realism in the depiction of drab or sordid subjects as in "a kitchen-sink drama".

In metaphorical terms, a sinking ship is something which is doomed; a lost cause; an impending debacle; an ongoing disaster. On the other hand, a sinking heart is a heart filled with great sadness.

I could go on but it's clear that such a common word has found its way into a great many expressions in the English language.

 skink: here is what Britannica has to say about skinks:

Skink, (family Scincidae), any of about 1,275 species of lizards, mostly secretive ground dwellers or burrowers, that are represented throughout most of the world but are especially diverse in Southeast Asia and its associated islands, the deserts of Australia, and the temperate regions of North America. The bodies of skinks are typically cylindrical in cross section, and most species have cone-shaped heads and long, tapering tails. The largest species, the prehensile-tailed skink (Corucia zebrata), reaches a maximum length of about 76 cm (30 inches), but most species are less than 20 cm (8 inches) long. Ground-dwelling and burrowing skinks may show such adaptations as a transparent “window” scale in place of a movable lower eyelid. This adaptation allows the animal to see and protect its eyes from rough particles while burrowing. Other species of skinks may have such peculiarities as reduced or absent limbs and sunken eardrums. Some species are arboreal (tree-dwelling), and others are semiaquatic. Skinks eat insects and similar small invertebrates; large species are herbivorous and consume fruits of various kinds. Some species lay eggs, while others give birth to fully developed young.

It seems that skink can be used as derogatory Black British slang for a white person.

Maybe that's a good point to end this post and save the remaining words (slink, spink, stink, swink, sync, think, twink, wink, zinc, zink, zinke) for a future post.