Pinfold

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An open enclosure for animals, especially an area where stray animals were rounded up if their owners failed to properly supervise their use of common grazing land.

    "These drawing near the wood, where close ypent / The wicked sprites in sylvan pinfolds were […]"

  2. 2
    a pen where stray animals are confined wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To confine (animals) in a pinfold. transitive

Example

More examples

"These drawing near the wood, where close ypent / The wicked sprites in sylvan pinfolds were […]"

Etymology

From Middle English pinfold, punfold, punfald, variants of Middle English pundfold, pundfald, from Old English pundfald (“pinfold”), equivalent to pound (“pen, enclosure”) + fold.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.