Schinken

German

Etymology

From Middle High German schinke, from Old High German scinco, from Proto-West Germanic *skinkō, from Proto-Germanic *skinkô, *skinkō (“shank; thigh”). In the sense “tome” originally student slang (18th c.), from the use of pigskin leather to bind such books.

Related to German Low German Schinken (also: skinken, sschinken (Westphalian; linguistic spelling; accusative)) Middle Dutch schenke (“shin, hough, ham”), Middle English schench (“thigh; leg”), dialectal English skink (“a shin of beef”), also English shank (“lower part of the leg”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃɪŋkən/, [ˈʃɪŋkŋ̩]

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• Hyphenation: Schin‧ken

Noun

Schinken m (strong, genitive Schinkens, plural Schinken)

1. ham, pork from the hindquarter
   • 1803, Neues Kochbuch für bürgerliche Haushaltungen, oder Anweisung zur Zubereitung einer gesunden und schmackhaften Hausmannskost, [...], Coburg, page 62:

     Einen Schinken gut zu backen. […] wällt ihn nach der Form des Schinken aus, […] Wenn der der Schinken abgetrocknet ist, […]

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. (colloquial) hams, buttocks

   Synonym: Oberschenkel

3. (colloquial, often derogatory) old tome or painting

   Ölschinken ― (large) oil painting

Declension

Declension of Schinken [masculine, strong]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	ein	der	Schinken	die	Schinken
genitive	eines	des	Schinkens	der	Schinken
dative	einem	dem	Schinken	den	Schinken
accusative	einen	den	Schinken	die	Schinken

Derived terms

• Lachsschinken
• Ölschinken

Descendants

• → Bulgarian: шунка (šunka)
• → Czech: šunka
• → Estonian: sink
• → Hungarian: sonka
• → Latvian: šķiņķis
• → Macedonian: шунка (šunka)
• → Polish: szynka
• → Romanian: șuncă
• → Russian: шинка (šinka) (regional)
• → Serbo-Croatian: šunka / шунка
• → Slovak: šunka
• → Slovene: šunka
• → Ukrainian: шинка (šynka)
• → Yiddish: שינקע (shinke) (via a Slavic borrowing)

Further reading

• “Schinken” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “Schinken” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon
• “Schinken” in Duden online
• “Schinken” in Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, 16 vols., Leipzig 1854–1961.
• Schinken on the German Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^de
• Friedrich Kluge (1883) “Schinken”, in John Francis Davis, transl., Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, published 1891