- skip - Brewer’s

Bodkin

.

When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin. (Hamlet, iii. 1). A stiletto worn by ladies in the hair, not a dagger. In the Seven Champions, Castria took her silver bodkin from her hair, and stabbed to death first her sister and then herself. Praxida stabbed herself in a similar manner. Shakespeare could not mean that a man might kill himself with a naked dagger, but that even a hair-pin would suffice to give a man his quietus.

 

previous entry · index · next entry

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

previous entry · index · next entry

Bobbery
Bobbish
Bobbit
Bobby
Boccus (King)
Bockland or Bookland
Bod
Boden-See
Bodies
Bodkin
Bodkin
Bodkin
Bodle
Bodleian Library (Oxford)
Body. (Anglo-Saxon, bodig.)
Body and Soul
Body-colour (A)
Body Corporate (A)
Body Politic (A)
Body-snatcher (A)
Bœmond