Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a trick.

1898

St Paul Globe (MN) 4 Dec. 20/4: Clint knew a kink or two about how to put down chips on a faro table.

2. non-standard practises, esp. in sexual activity; also attrib.

1902		D. St John Memoirs of Madge Buford 79: The dog [...] worked his loins rapidly and my feelings touched a new kink in licentiousness.
1916		Illus. Bits (London) 30 Sept. 14/2: I often wish I had been born a girl that I could always wear the delightful feminine clothing. I suppose this is a ‘kink’ of mine.
1928		D. Lawley Hustling Hobo 288: Dante was warped somehow. He must have got a jolt at some time which gave him one big kink about women and women worship. Maybe others had it afore him, that kink, but sireee, give me Omar every time. He’s got all the goods! [...] Old Khayyam has got Dante all chewed up and beaten to a frazzle.
1959		C. MacInnes Absolute Beginners 65: Vice of every kink, and speakeasies and spielers and friends who carve each other up.
1962		R. Hauser Homosexual Society 35: People have got used to a workmate ‘with a kink’.
1970		J. Wambaugh New Centurions 184: ‘[L]esbians, sadists, masochists, hypes, whores, flim flammers, paddy hustlers, hugger muggers [...] and anybody else with a kink of some kind.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 131: He smiled at her, convinced Tricesta was the girl with the kink.
1984		Flame : a Life on the Game 68: Frank said: ‘I have this kink’ [...] It turned out that he meant he would like to see me being screwed in bed by another guy.
1995		R. Campbell Wizard of La-La Land (1999) 165: ‘Lucifer’s.’ ‘The kink club down on the beach above Malibu?’.
2012		J. Fagan Panopticon (2013) 225: They do dominatrix stuff, high-class and kink only [...] It’s [i.e. a ‘dungeon’] a classy establishment.
2014		T. Black Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] It didn’t make sense, unless he had a kink for the outdoors.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 14: Was he a john whose longtime kink was climbing in through skylights?
2016		‘Chelsea G. Summers’ New Republic 19 Apr. 🌐 Writing the details of her life—her first boyfriend who ‘got’ her kink, her childhood discovery of spanking [...] Keenan repeats her assertion that her kink is her sexual identity.

3. obsession with, excessive enthusiasm for.

1915		Truth (Wellington) 22 May 7/3: [Her] kink for stagger juice caused her husband [...] to put in for a divorce.
1922		Truth (Wellington) 3 June 5/8: He [...] appears to have a decided kink for crime of the breaking and entering order.
1950		‘Josephine Tey’ To Love and Be Wise 74: ‘You would have to know about their mental kink before you suffered any unholy attraction’.

4. a sexually abnormal person, an eccentric.

1965		Harper’s Bazaar Jan. 54/1: His phone is ex-directory because of all the kinks who used to phone at 2 a.m.
1979		J. Morrow Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 109: We’re used to [...] religious lunatics of other persuasions, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the like – but this one’s a funny kink.
2006		C. Hiaasen Nature Girl 109: My client happens to be a total kink.