as in to bind
to confine or restrain with or as if with chains
Joan of Arc was pinioned to a stake and burned as a heretic
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Recent Examples of pinion
To be clear, there is no sense that Rondón and Ugás are defending the old guard or suggesting that a docile, starving population pinioned under the grip of a dictatorship is big-picture preferable to a rebellious insurgency.
—
Jessica Kiang, Variety, 31 Oct. 2025
Haas thus theorized that the victim had been pinioned by both heels to the front of the upright beam either with their legs splayed open, frog-like, or with their knees bent and turned to one side.
—Fredrick Kunkle, Anchorage Daily News, 8 Apr. 2023
There is only one substantial object in the show, a set of wooden stocks for pinioning the legs of multiple enslaved people.
—Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 23 Mar. 2023
See All Example Sentences for pinion
Jessica Kiang, Variety, 31 Oct. 2025
Haas thus theorized that the victim had been pinioned by both heels to the front of the upright beam either with their legs splayed open, frog-like, or with their knees bent and turned to one side.
—Fredrick Kunkle, Anchorage Daily News, 8 Apr. 2023
There is only one substantial object in the show, a set of wooden stocks for pinioning the legs of multiple enslaved people.
—Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 23 Mar. 2023
See All Example Sentences for pinion
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pinion
Verb
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British monarchs are constitutionally bound to remain above politics, able only to represent the UK rather than speak for its government.—
Issy Ronald,
CNN Money,
28 Apr. 2026
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Even if the rule is finalized, the EPA would still have to take more steps before Americans see binding legal changes.—
Justin Zorn,
STAT,
28 Apr. 2026
Verb
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Bregman wasn’t fazed by it, slugging a game-tying home run in the eighth inning Friday for his first marquee moment in a Cubs uniform.—
Meghan Montemurro,
Chicago Tribune,
26 Apr. 2026
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Up next The Hawks head to Madison Square Garden on Tuesday for Game 5 with the series tied 2-2.—
Lauren Williams,
AJC.com,
26 Apr. 2026
Verb
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Ziggy remained chained to a wall inside the Pachyderm House for 29 years.—
Kori Rumore,
Chicago Tribune,
26 Apr. 2026
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At times, the children were chained to their beds or put in cages for breaking house rules.—
Zoey Lyttle,
PEOPLE,
17 Apr. 2026
Verb
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Syrian authorities on Friday arrested Amjad Yousef, a former intelligence officer who appeared in a video leaked four years ago that appears to show him and his comrades executing dozens of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon during the civil war.—
Ghaith Alsayed,
Los Angeles Times,
26 Apr. 2026
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Carvajal’s name was absent from the top of the January indictment unsealed on the morning Maduro arrived shackled in New York with Flores.—
Max Saltman,
CNN Money,
26 Apr. 2026
Verb
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries lashed back at Leavitt.—
Ted Johnson,
Deadline,
27 Apr. 2026
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Leo has not lashed out, or gotten defensive, or allowed himself to be pulled down into the gutter.—
Peter Wehner,
The Atlantic,
27 Apr. 2026
Verb
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Yet this season he was fettered by scratches of both the injured and healthy variety.—
Andrew Knoll,
Daily News,
5 Mar. 2026
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This comes in the wake of millions of apps being dumped from Play Store for not being good enough and an expansion of Google’s Play Integrity API to fetter app behaviors on phones no longer eligible for security updates — Android 12 or older.—
Zak Doffman,
Forbes.com,
26 Aug. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Pinion.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pinion. Accessed 2 May. 2026.
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