英和和英

語源 1

Unknown; first attested in 1894. A connection to Yiddish as some propose is unlikely.

Suggested origins include:

• German Fink (“finch; frivolous or dissolute person; informer”) as finches are notoriously chatty birds in groups. If so, then Doublet of finch. Compare canary (“informer”).
• Partly from the German theory, a fanciful association by students with the freedom of wild birds as opposed to caged ones.
• The slang name pink for Pinkerton agents and their use as strikebreakers in the 1892 Homestead strike. If the term is from the corporate name, then it is of Scots origin, Pinkerton being from a place near Dunbar, which is from an unrecognized first element (possibly ultimately pre-Celtic substrate) and 古期英語 tūn (“enclosure, homestead, etc.”).

名詞

fink (plural finks) (chiefly US, slang)

1. A contemptible person.

   Synonyms: rat, ratfink

   Near-synonyms: see Thesaurus:jerk, Thesaurus:idiot

2. An informer.

   Synonyms: rat, ratfink; see also Thesaurus:informant

3. A strikebreaker.

   Synonyms: rat, ratfink, scab

派生語

• ratfink

動詞

fink (third-person singular simple present finks, present participle finking, simple past and past participle finked)

1. (chiefly US, slang) To betray a trust; to inform on.
   • 1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 222:

     “I move that we determine through a thorough investigation whether the new worker is a fink or no; and if he is a fink, let us discover who heʼs finking for!”

同意語

• inform, grass up, snitch; See also Thesaurus:rat out

派生語

• fink out

語源 2

動詞

fink (third-person singular simple present finks, present participle finking, simple past and past participle fought)

1. (dialectal, th-fronting) Pronunciation spelling of think.

語源 3

From Afrikaans vink.

名詞

fink (plural finks)

1. (South Africa) Any of several birds in the family Ploceidae native to southern Africa.

派生語

• kaffir fink

参照

• “fink”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "fink" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
• "fink" in the Dictionary of South African English
• “fink”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989)
• Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996)