"bone in her teeth"

[Joel S. Berson]

Insufficient imagination on my part.  "Bone in her mouth" indeed also
is in the OED, dated 1627, with its only other quotation
1851.  "Bone, n.", sense 14.b.  I can only claim absence from the OED
for the "teeth" variant.

(GBooks shows a few quotations for "in her mouth" between 1660 and
1768, in the long-ignored long 18th century, which I searched from
1627 to 1820.)

Joel

At 5/28/2011 12:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Antedates 1835 in HDAS.
>
>But "bone in her mouth" goes back to the 1600s. (Ibid.)
>
>JL
>
>On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      "bone in her teeth"
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Not in OED, although perhaps this metaphoric use does not merit
> > inclusion.  Google Books has the phrase back to 1824, and about 2300
> > more times, including the ?2003 [Camden, ME: International
> > Marine/McGraw-Hill, 2001] _Dictionary of Nautical Literacy_, by Robert
> > McKenna.
> >
> > ... off sailed the boat, proudly dashing the foaming waters on either
> > side of her bow, or in the more expressive language of her crew,
> > "carrying a white bone in her teeth."
> >
> > Atlantic Magazine,  Vol. 1 (Sep.1824), p. 349.  In "Paunch Hogabout.
> > A Moral Tale" [anon.]
> >
> > Joel
> >
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