fink

• IPA^(key): /fɪŋk/

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• Rhymes: -ɪŋk

Unknown; first attested in 1894.[1] A connection to Yiddish as some propose is unlikely.[2]

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 Old English tun (“enclosure, homestead, etc.”).

fink (plural finks)

1. (chiefly US, slang) A contemptible person.
2. (chiefly US, slang) An informer.
3. (chiefly US, slang) A strikebreaker.

• (informer): See Thesaurus:informant

• ratfink

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!”

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

• fink out

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

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

From Afrikaans vink.

fink (plural finks)

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

• kaffir fink

• “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)

• fing

From Proto-Albanian *spinga, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pingos (“chaffinch”), identical with Greek σπίγγος (spíngos, “id”), English spink, Old Norse spiki (“kind of bird”). One might also consider a borrowing from Proto-Germanic *finkiz, *finkōn (“finch”), possibly Balkan Gothic.

fink m (plural finkë, definite finku, definite plural finkët)

1. finch

• beng

• finke

From Middle Low German vinke. Akin to English finch.

• IPA^(key): /fɪŋk/

fink m (definite singular finken, indefinite plural finker, definite plural finkene)

1. a bird of the family Fringillidae, the finches

• bokfink

• “fink” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

From Middle Low German vinke. Akin to English finch.

• IPA^(key): /fɪŋk/

fink m (definite singular finken, indefinite plural finkar, definite plural finkane)

1. a bird of the family Fringillidae, the finches

• bokfink

• “fink” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

From Proto-Germanic *finkiz

fink m

1. finch

From Middle Low German vinke, from Old Saxon *fink, from Proto-Germanic *finkiz.

fink c

1. a finch (bird)

• bergfink
• bofink

• fink in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)

• knif