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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A chink is a hole, especially a crack opened up when something splits. It can also used to describe any long, narrow opening, the sort of opening we might find between the boards on the siding of a house (Curiously, the cognate verb “to chink†usually refers to covering up a crack rather than opening it up: when we chink a log house, we don’t make chinks, we make them go away by filling in the gaps between the logs.).
“Chink†with the meaning of hole, fissure, crack is not very common in modern English. A large number of people know the word only through the idiom “chink in one’s armor†(About a third of the instances of this meaning of “chink†in COCA and BNC, for example, have this idiomatic context.). Most of the people who employ the idiom aren’t describing armor. They are extending the metaphor of a gap between armor plates that exposes vulnerable body parts into a situation in which one is open to some kind of attack. We might say, for example that “Pat’s infatuation with the Atomic Kittens is a chink in his moral armor.â€
A “kink†is a tight twist or curl in rope or hair. “Kink†is often use figuratively to describe other kinds of twists. Kinky sex, for example, takes one outside the straight and narrow approach to erotic entertainment (or so I’ve read).
Hundreds of web sites document the fact that some speakers believe the idiom “chink in one’s armor†is actually “kink in one’s armor.†The underlying imagery is changed from a gap in one’s defenses to a misalignment that reduces full protection.
Examples:
High school sports blog “ Law of percentages say eventually, someone has to find a kink in the armor.â€
Tech forum post “Is there an on-line link that could update the system or hopefully some of you who have seen this before and have already hammered out the kink in the armor ?â€
Description of a cartoon warrior “they would often use his knowledge to help interrogate Autobot prisoners for he could easily find a kink in one’s armor.â€
Last edited by kem (2009-05-10 14:01:40)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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I see a voice! Now will I to the chink, to spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face (or words to that effect.)
There is some precedent elsewhere for the oddness of chink v. = ‘get rid of chinks n.’ Contrast plant v. = ‘put in plants n.’ with weed v. = ‘get rid of weeds n.’ think also of boning chickens and pitting cherries.
But of course with chinking you are getting rid of a lack, which is itself a kind of paradoxical idea. I think that some people have come to think of a chink as something more like a chip, a positive little piece of something rather than a lack of something you might expect.
I really think he has a chink missing.
(Which, political correctness aside, always makes me think that it must be normal to have several Chinese individuals running around in your head to help you think.)
Also relevant:
We need to get a couple of chinks worked out
That put his armor in a chink
That threw a kink in the armor
We need to get the kink out of the bottleneck
That threw a kink into the monkey wrench
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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