Does anyone know why fancy trim, typically a zigzag edge, is known as “pinking” or a “pinking cut”? Obviously, the cutting tool has the same name, but why?
"Drink a drink, a drink, a drink . . .
From Word for Word
“Any thoughts on the origins of the phrase in the pink?” writes Lee Seats (laseats@redrose.net), inspired presumably by the name of his Email server.
Ever thought of the term pinking shears? It’s linked. The pink is a metaphorical reference to flowers, and pinking shears comes from the points along the blades, which resemble the points on flowers such as daisies.
So, in the pink, which now means in excellent health, originally meant exactly right, or the best, in terms of anything. Mercutio says in Romeo and Juliet: “I am in the very pink of courtesy” and Romeo replies: “Pink for flower?”
Flowers themselves were metaphors for excellence, so in the pink meant in the flower meant in the excellent place, or exactly right. The phrase lived on past the metaphor on which it was based, and took the particular meaning we’re now famliar with. "
Try this… Word for Word
A pink was a hole punched in fabric for decoration.
The name of the colour is much later, only coming into common use in the nineteenth century, and is probably unrelated.