hinge

A jointed or flexible device that allows the pivoting of a door etc.

The massy portals of the churches swung creaking on their hinges; and some lay dead on the pavement.

A naturally occurring joint resembling such hardware in form or action, as in the shell of a bivalve.

The pedicel of the pollinium is articulated as before by a hinge to the disc; it can move freely only in one direction owing to one end of the disc being upturned.

A stamp hinge, a folded and gummed paper rectangle for affixing postage stamps in an album.

A principle, or a point in time, on which subsequent reasonings or events depend.

This argument was the hinge on which the question turned.

But let me say, with all deference, that these positions do not appear to me to touch the hinge of the argument before us.

The median of the upper or lower half of a batch, sample, or probability distribution.

To attach by, or equip with a hinge.

To depend on something.

Games can hinge on the sort of controversial decision made by Taylor in the 10th minute. After Rivière collected Gabriel Obertan’s pass and sashayed beyond Daley Blind he drew the United centre-half into a rash, clumsy challenge but, puzzlingly, Taylor detected no penalty.

The breaking off of the distal end of a knapped stone flake whose presumed course across the face of the stone core was truncated prematurely, leaving not a feathered distal end but instead the scar of a nearly perpendicular break.

The flake hinged at an inclusion in the core.

To bend.

Be thou a Flatterer now, and ſeeke to thriue / By that which ha's^([sic – meaning has]) vndone thee; hindge thy knee, / And let his very breath whom thou'lt obſerue / Blow off thy Cap: [...]

To move or already be positioned in such a fashion that it presents itself as rotation when an off-centre fixed point is taken into account.

A surname.