If you hinged a door, a gate, or a lid, you attached it with a hinge — the small joint that lets it swing open and still stay on. Workers hinge boxes, cupboards, and gates so they can move without falling off. You also hear hinged as a describing word: a hinged lid is one attached that way. It is practical, everyday English for making and mending things, not a fancy word. Though actually, the same spelling shows up in two other places people stretch: a plan that hinged on one phone call (depended on it), and, on the internet, hinged as “calm and together,” because unhinged already meant “wild, not in control.” That last sense was cut back from unhinged; it is mostly young and online, and not everyone uses it.