English

Noun

whin ‎(countable and uncountable, plural whins)

1. Gorse; furze.
   • 1790, Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter, 1828, Thomas Park (editor), Works of the British Poets, Volume XX: The Poems of Robert Burns, page 65,

     By this time he was cross the ford, / Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; / And past the birks and meikle stane, / Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; / And through the whins, and by the cairn, / Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; / And near the thorn, aboon the well, / Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.

   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, A Scots Quair, 1995, Canongate Books, page 38,

     And sometimes they clambered down […] and saw the whin bushes climb black the white hills beside them and far and away the blink of lights across the moors where folk lay happed and warm.

2. The plant woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria).

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gray to this entry?)

3. Whinstone.

Derived terms

• moor whin
• needle whin
• petty whin
• whin bruiser
• whin sparrow (Prunella modularis)
• whin thrush (Turdus iliacus)