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Bodkin   /bˈɑdkɪn/   Listen
Bodkin

noun
1.
A dagger with a slender blade.  Synonym: poniard.
2.
Formerly a long hairpin; usually with an ornamental head.
3.
A small sharp-pointed tool for punching holes in leather or fabric.
4.
A blunt needle for threading ribbon through loops.  Synonym: threader.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Bodkin" Quotes from Famous Books



... place, and, as far as he could see, there was not a place where he could have hidden away a bodkin, let alone the ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... to exchange shots, they should stand at right angles with the principals and all fire together. A duel of this nature took place near Glinsk, the seat of Sir J. Bourke, between that gentleman and a Mr. Bodkin, when the old family steward and other servants brought out the son, then a child, and held him on men's shoulders to see papa fight! Professed duelists were called "fire-eaters," and the first two questions always asked as to a young gentleman's respectability ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... and Foul! Thy mate, the Ghoul, Beats, bat-like, at thy golden gate! Around the graves the night-winds howl: "Arise!" they cry, "thy feast doth wait!" Dainty fingers thine, and nice, With thy bodkin picking rice!— ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... waistbands, 5 handkerchiefs, 1/4 lb. of tea, 2 pen-wipers, some little playthings, 2 combs, some slate pencils, 3 chimney ornaments, 4 paintings, 3 books, 16 pamphlets, a fan, a little box, 13 chemises, 2 shirts, a frock and cape, a shawl border, 3 bodkin cases, 2 1/2 yards of print, a gown, and a few other little things.—Great indeed was my joy in receiving this box, for it was a fresh proof to me, in this our present great poverty, that the Lord hears our prayers and is ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller

... of the poore? The widow being oppressd, the orphan wrong'd; [E1] The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne, And thousand more calamities besides, To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life, When that he may his full Quietus make, With a bare bodkin, who would this indure, But for a hope of something after death? Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence, Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue, Than flie to others that we ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare

... just as he was about to leave Castle Morony for the meet at Ballytowngal, the seat, as everybody knows, of Sir Nicholas Bodkin. Ballytowngal is about two miles from Claregalway, on the road to Oranmore. Sir Nicholas is known all through the West of Ireland, as a sporting man, and is held in high esteem. But there is, I think, something different in the estimation which he ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... her apron, tearing off the strings. She unfastened and stepped from the skirt of her calico dress. With one apron string she tied shut the band and placket. She pulled a wire pin from her hair, stuck it through the other string, and using it as a bodkin ran it around the hem of her skirt, so shortly she had a large bag. She put several branches inside to which the moths could cling, closed the mouth partially and held it ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... more for it than if it were the slaying of half a dozen sheep, he must needs go and pay frequent visits to Ingeborg and to Halgerda of the Foss—and—and—But I know it is all out of spite, and that he does not care a bodkin for either of them, yet I cannot bear it, and I won't bear it, so he had better look to himself. And yet I would not for the best mantle in the dale that he knew I had two thoughts ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... your court-curls, or your spangles, or your tricks: I affect not these high gable-ends, these Tuscan tops, nor your coronets, nor your arches, nor your pyramids; give me a fine, sweet-little delicate dressing with a bodkin, as you say; and a mushroom ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... consumed him that he became quite a skeleton, notwithstanding every remedy which he had tried. At length he tried a sympathetic remedy: he took an egg, and having boiled it hard in his own urine, he then with a bodkin perforated the shell in different parts, and then buried it in an ant-hill. As the ants wasted the egg he found his strength increase, and he soon was completely cured. A daughter of a French officer was so tormented by a paronychia (?) for four days together, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... you; then slightly bend the finger, this will draw down the lower lid of the eye, and you will probably be able to remove the dirt; but if this will not enable you to get at it, repeat this operation while you have a knitting-needle or bodkin placed over the eyelid; this will turn it inside out, and enable you to remove the sand, or eyelash, etc., with the corner of a fine silk handkerchief. As soon as the substance is removed, bathe the eye with cold water, and exclude the light for a day. If the inflammation ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... great moppets of hair on either side her brow, (as in the old engravings of Louis Philippe's good queen Amelia,) very resolute, very learned in the boundaries of all Christian and heathen countries, patient to a fault, with a marvellous capacity for pointing out with her bodkin every letter to some wee thing at its first stage of spelling, and yet keeping an eye upon all the school-room; reading a chapter from the Bible, and saying a prayer each morning upon her bended knees,—the little ones all kneeling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... offerings from various of the older girls. The immemorial trifles that women exchange. A bottle of eau de cologne. The inevitable six handkerchiefs. A silver bodkin for running ribbon through lingerie. And from the booking department, a silk umbrella suitably engraved. She cried ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... the end of it all? Though Eliza Hamlyn went straight out and despatched that syren of the golden hair with a poison-tipped bodkin (and possibly her will might be good to do it), it could not make things any the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... said the judge, "I am going to hold the bodkin, of which the eye is sufficiently large, to put this thread into it without trouble. If you do put it in, I will take up your case, and will make Monseigneur offer you ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... with the harlot's bodkin, the head and the hand, nailed on the beaked column in after days, showed which best knew the people, their savior, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... wine and a glass. She started as the sound struck on her delicate nerves; and, looking at young Thorpe directly, signed that she did not wish for any wine. The sudden movement of her body thus occasioned, shook off her lap a little mother-of-pearl bodkin case, which lay more than half out of one of the pockets of her apron. The bodkin case rolled under the stool, without her seeing it, for she was looking towards the supper-table: without being observed by Mat, for his eyes were following the direction of her's: ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... stab a Warsash crab with a bodkin,' said he. 'Thanks to good Sir Jacob Clancing, once of Snellaby Hall and now of Salisbury Plain, their rapiers did no more than scratch my plate of proof. But how is it ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Paper, for of that they have little or none; but on a Talli-pot leaf with an Iron Bodkin, which makes an impression. This leaf thus written on, is not folded, but rolled up like ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... in which the Republic was brought to an end. On the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the people, while Fulvia specially avenged herself by piercing the tongue with her bodkin. That is the story of Cicero's death as it has been ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... she killed herself with that, without producing any visible wound. Another story was, that she had an asp in a box somewhere in her apartment, which she had reserved for this occasion, and when the time finally came, that she pricked and teased it with a golden bodkin to make it angry, and then placed it upon her flesh and received its sting. Which of these stones, if either of them, was true, could never be known. It has, however, been generally believed among mankind that Cleopatra ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... gown, puffed with crimson velvet, a velvet hood lined with white satin, a girdle of gold and pearls, crimson stockings, white satin slippers, a lace rebato, and a pearl necklace. Oh, how charming you would look! You would not know yourself. Then I should put a gold bodkin in your hair, and a head-drop of pearls set round a diamond, and bracelets instead of these lawn cuffs, and a fan; and wash your face in distilled waters, and odoriferous oils ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... bodykins man, better. Vse euerie [Sidenote: bodkin man, much better,] man after his desart, and who should scape whipping: [Sidenote: shall] vse them after your own Honor and Dignity. The lesse they deserue, the more merit is in your ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... his head with the handle which brought him to his knees. He stumbled and fell at the threshold of the maids' chamber. And, by my sooth, the Lady Ysolinde stooped and poignarded him as featly as though it had been a work of broidering with a bodkin. Too late, Helene wept and besought her to hold her hand. He was, she said, some one's son or lover. It was deucedly unpractical. But, 'twas my Little Playmate. And after all, I suppose, the crack he got from me in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... sit or fall down:—but no; with Mrs. H.'s hand on his shoulder, "'Quam familiariter'"[2] (as Terence said, when I was at school,) they walked about a minute, and then at it again, like two cock-chafers spitted on the same bodkin. I asked what all this meant, when, with a loud laugh, a child no older than our Wilhelmina (a name I never heard but in the 'Vicar of Wakefield', though her mother would call her after the Princess of Swappenbach,) ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... with this mine heart is throbbing, and man saith, 'Be still!' How can I be still, unless I were still in death? And man reckoneth I shall be a-paid for my lost sword with a needle, and for my broken sceptre he offereth me a bodkin!" ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... the core and blossom with a bodkin; make a syrup with half their weight of sugar; put in the apples, and keep them under the syrup with a spoon, and they will be done in ten minutes over a slow fire. When cold, tie ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... Clown's in a pantomime! The way in which that Calverley talks slang, is quite disgusting. I hate chaff in a woman. And old Colchicum! that old Col, coming down here in his brougham, with his coronet on it, and sitting bodkin between Mademoiselle Coralie and her mother! It's too bad. An English peer, and a horse-rider of Franconi's!—It won't do; by Jove, it won't do. I ain't proud; ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... carriage; and if Mr. Preston chooses to swear at a lady of my years in that ojous vulgar way—in that ojous vulgar way I repeat—I don't see why my friends should be inconvenienced for him. Let him sit on the dicky if he likes, or come in and ride bodkin." It was quite clear that my Lady Drum hated her grandson-in-law heartily; and I've remarked somehow in families that this kind of hatred is ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the window, and what should he see sitting on the sill outside but a little woman tapping the pane with a golden bodkin. ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... control your tongue, Betty," said Moppet primly, with a roguish twinkle of her eyes upward. "Miss Bidwell says mine is an unruly member, and told me a most dire tale of a little girl whose mother for punishment pricked her tongue with a hot bodkin." ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... wins my admiration To view the structure of this little work— A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without; No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut, No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, No glue to join; his little beak was all; And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand, And every implement and means of art, And twenty years' apprenticeship to boot, Could make me such another? Fondly then We boast of excellence, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... romances, the last plays of Etherege, Dryden, and Shadwell, a volume of Cowley, and some amorous songs, lay on the table; and not far from them were a loomask, pulvil purse, a pair of scented gloves, a richly-laced mouchoir, a manteau girdle, palatine tags, and a golden bodkin ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... or small Rockets on its Head, you may put in about an Inch and a half of dry Powder for the Bounce, but if you are to place the fore-mention'd things on the Head of a great Rocket, you must close down the Paper or Paste-board very hard, and prick two or three holes with a Bodkin, that it may give fire to them when it Expires, placing a large Cartoush or Paste-board on the head of the Rocket, into which you must put the Stars or small Rockets, Paper-Serpents, or Quill-Serpents; of which I shall ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... of her mother, she would have made short work of her vengeance. No fine scruples would have delayed her; she would not have had a moment's question whether she had not better kill herself; she would have out with her bare bodkin and ended the doubt by first passing it through her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... billet-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around;—the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... I'll allow you now to find fault with my face; for I'll swear your impudence has put me out of countenance. But look you here now, where did you lose this gold bodkin? ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... society and making many friends, whom she had the tact to retain through life. When articles of dress or ornament are named for one, it is an unfailing sign that they have attained notoriety, if not fame, and the bodkin used for fastening the "back hair" was called "Glorvina" in her honor. Like many attractive women of decided character, she had her full share of faults and foibles. Superficial, conceited, sadly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... secretary; carved mother-of-pearl paper-knife, gold seal, gold pencil, case full of fancy writing paper; made in Paris 1 bula work-box, elegant; inlaid 125 with silver and lined with ci-satin, fitted with gold thimble, needle, scissors, pen-knife, gold bodkin, cotton winders; outside to match French piano 1 long knitting-case to match the 40 above, fitted with needles, beads and silk of every description 1 papier-mache work-box, and 5 fitted up 1 morocco work-bag, ornamented 3 with bright steel; fitted up with scissors, thimble, etc 1 lady's ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... on. I stood by when that poor mad wretch Damiens was pulled to pieces by horses in the Greve. I have seen what the plague could do in the galleys at Marseilles. Death and I have been boon companions and bedfellows. He has danced a jig with me on a plank, and ridden bodkin, and gone snacks with me for a lump of horse-flesh in a beleaguered town; but no man can say that John Dangerous had aught but a bold face to show that Phantom who frights nursemaids and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... itself was brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not niggard with his ink when he cursed the English and damned the Prussians; and he obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he termed the sniveling nobility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he not himself noble? Had not his parents and his brothers gone to the guillotine with the rest of them? But he, thank God, had no wooden mind; ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... I was afraid and shockd at so loathsome a Spectacle. She stepped back, swollen with Rage, to see if I had the Insolence to repeat it. I did, with this Addition, that her ill-timed Passion had increased her Ugliness. Enraged, inflamed, distracted, she snatched a Bodkin, and with all her Force stabbed me to the Heart. Dying, I preserv'd my Sincerity, and expressed the Truth, tho' in broken Words; and by reproachful Grimaces to the last I mimick'd the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... little immortal does not touch the earth; he hangs suspended by that long bill, which just tethers him to its flowers. Now and then he will let down the little black tendrils of legs and feet on some bare twig, and there be rests and preens those already smooth plumules with the long slender bodkin you lent him. Now, just now, he darts into my room, coquets with my basket of flowers, "a kiss, a touch, and then away." I heard the whirr of those gauzy wings; it was not to the flowers alone he told his story. You did well to trust this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... carriage was always filled. Even Mademoiselle Henriette managed to go sometimes - aided by a little patent medicine, and when it was too hot for the chauffrette. If she was unable, a friend in the neighbourhood was offered a seat; and I had to sit bodkin, or on Mademoiselle Aglae's lap. I hated the 'friend'; for, secretly, I felt the carriage was mine, though of course I never had the bad taste to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... week after Mr Bodkin & Co, the agent, had that glass of wine in the pantry, that he came in all of a bustle, as he always was, just as if he must get everything done before dark, and says he has let the house, ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... the corner is only one-half its actual size. The kerchief itself is about twenty-two inches square and is very dainty in effect. The stars which fill in the central portion are very simple to make, and the eyelets in each are punched with a bodkin and then worked once around in point de Bruxelles or button-hole stitch. The kerchief is made of fine Brussels net and the darning ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.

... villages. No doubt some of our readers have come across the old pin poppets which boys and girls carried with them to the village school half a century or more ago. The girls filled them with pins and needles, bodkin and stiletto, and the boys with pencils and pens. In Fig. 75 two curious old pin boxes are illustrated. The pins shown on the same page are, however, of much older date; they are, in fact, merely thorns; ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... She drew a bodkin from her haire, And wip'd it upon her gown-a; And curs'd be every maiden faire, That will ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... him, and yet you lived," replied Cedric; "wretch! was there no poniard—no knife—no bodkin!—Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Cicero had often rebuked. Forsyth says, "She took it, and placing it on her lap, addressed it as if it were alive, in words of bitter insult. She dragged out the tongue, whose sarcasms she had so often felt, and with feminine rage pierced it with her bodkin. It was then taken and nailed to the rostra, together with the hands, to molder there in mockery of the triumphs of his eloquence, of which that spot had so often been the scene. A sadder sight was never gazed ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... Well, I guess I know Miss Jane Cobden. She and Bart was hunched up that close you couldn't get a bodkin 'tween 'em. She had that red cloak around her and the hood up ever her head. Not know her, and she within ten feet o' me? Well, I guess I got my eyes ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... they appear in rocks a foot above water. There are also in some places great store of mussels and cockles. There is also a fish called a stingray, which resembles a skate, only on one side of his tail grows out a sharp bone like a bodkin about four or five inches long, with which he sticks and wounds other fish ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... profession were allowed to rescind the matrimonial obligation. Whoever transgressed the permission of the law was subject to various and heavy penalties. The woman was stripped of her wealth and ornaments, without excepting the bodkin of her hair: if the man introduced a new bride into his bed, her fortune might be lawfully seized by the vengeance of his exiled wife. Forfeiture was sometimes commuted to a fine; the fine was sometimes aggravated by transportation to an island or imprisonment in a monastery; the injured ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... gold or coral beads and necklaces, combs of silver or gold, heavy ear-rings, curiously wrought brooches, perhaps cameos or mosaics, though I think they prefer purely metallic work to these. One ornament very common among them is a large bodkin, which they stick through their hair. It is usually of silver, but sometimes it looks like steel, and is made in the shape of a sword,—a long Spanish thrusting sword, for example. Dr. Franco told us a story ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gripping the bottom and cover sticks of square work, and a lapboard on which the workman fixes the upsetted bottom while siding up the basket. This is the full kit. A common round or oval basket may, however, be made with no other tools than a shop-knife and a bodkin. On the continent of Europe shapes or blocks are in use on which the fabric is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue elsewhere of this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By and by, however, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... permeation; infiltration. [interposition by one person in another's affairs, at the intervenor's initiative] intervention, interference; intrusion, obtrusion; insinuation. insertion &c 300; dovetailing; embolism. intermediary, intermedium^; go between, bodkin^, intruder, interloper; parenthesis, episode, flyleaf. partition, septum, diaphragm; midriff; dissepiment^; party wall, panel, room divider. halfway house. V. lie between, come between, get between; intervene, slide in, interpenetrate, permeate. put between, introduce, import, throw in, wedge in, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... washable silk lingerie tape with bodkin, all ready for running. Your choice of pink or blue in delicate shades, 85c post paid. Just one of hundreds of equally attractive things shown in our catalog of Gifts for every member of the family and for every gift occasion. Select from our catalog and make your Christmas shopping a pleasure. ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... He walked to the cases one by one and sounded them. Their lids were screwed on but the screws were dummies. He found in the side of each a minute hole under the cover of the lid and, taking out his knife, he pressed in the bodkin with which the knife was equipped and with a click the lid flew open. The box was empty. The second one answered the same test and was also empty. The third gave no better result. He flashed his lamp on the bottom of the box, but there was no trace ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... loved form of wit among us Sodomites. We love it for its own sake, but more for the pain it gives the other fellow. We like to see him squirm, and we have many a joyous hour over our friends' misfortunes. Turn yourself into a mental bodkin, and you will find favor among us, for it is better to be feared than ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... the slime, and take out the entrails, lard the back with pickled herrings, (you must have a sharp bodkin to make the holes to lard it) then take some great oysters and claret-wine, season the oysters with pepper and nutmeg, stuff the belly with oysters, and intermix the stuffing with rosemary, tyme, winter savory, sweet marjoram, a little onion, and garlick, sow these in the belly of ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... obscurity. Little men most beset me, most hang about my garments, and sigh most for my smiles. The rich man would have me build monuments to his memory; the ambitious poor man repines when I forget him. Novel-writing damsels, their eyes bedimmed with bodkin shaped tears, and their fingers steeled with envious pens it seems their love to dip in gall, cast longing looks at me. Peter Parley, and other poets, have laid their offerings low at my feet. I have crowned kings and emperors; and I have cast a favor to a fool. With queens and princes ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... profusion and delicacies of a Languedocian dinner, would appear mere babes and sucklings in the eating way, compared to a party of Germans at their one o'clock feed. The difference is nearly as great as between the Lady Amine eating rice with a bodkin, and the same fair one battening ghoulishly upon the cold meat in the cemetery. Nothing can equal the persevering industry with which a German crams himself at a public table, where, having to pay a fixed sum for his dinner, he always seems desirous to get as much as he can ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... ever got such a fright in my life. My gun had gone to the bottom along with the boat, and the only weapon I had left was a short hunting knife, which against such a beast as that would be of no more use than a bodkin. I fairly gave myself up for lost, making sure that in another moment he'd spring forward and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... M. Lartet picked up many human implements, such as bone knives, flattened circular stones supposed to have been used for sharpening flint knives, perforated sling-stones, many arrow-heads and spear-heads, flint knives, a bodkin made of a roebuck's horn, various implements of reindeers' horn, and teeth beads, from the teeth of the great fossil bear (Ursus spelaeus). Remains were also found of nine different species of carnivora, such as the fossil bear, the hyena, cat, wolf, fox, and others, and of twelve of herbivora, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... recognize the letters and pronounce the words. They read rapidly; and you should see them blush, poor little things, when they make a mistake. And they write, too, without ink. They write on a thick and hard sort of paper with a metal bodkin, which makes a great many little hollows, grouped according to a special alphabet; these little punctures stand out in relief on the other side of the paper, so that by turning the paper over and drawing their fingers across ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... my self of imploying a way, which produc'd the desir'd Effect both sooner and better. For holding betwixt my Fingers a Steel Bodkin, near the Lower part of it, I press'd the point hard against the Surface of the Diamond, and much more if I struck the point against it, the Coruscation would be extremely suddain, and very Vivid, though very Vanishing too, and this way which commonly much surpris'd ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... handsome peasant girl from Albano as housemaid, who was much admired by our English friends in her scarlet cloth bodice, trimmed with gold lace, and the silver spadone, or bodkin, fastening her plaits of dark hair; but she very soon exchanged her picturesque costume for a bonnet, etc., in which she looked ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... this moment I had but one idea of avoiding my fate, and that was to kill myself. 'Twas to this end I had borrow'd the bodkin of the maid. Afterward I had a notion of flinging myself from the window as they came for me. But now, as I look'd down on that coil of rope lying directly below, a prettier scheme struck me. I sat down on the floor of my cell and pull'd off my ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... said,—"right there to that tree under which you are sitting, Jacky Bonhomme." Jacques incontinently shifted his position. "He chains him there, with one chain around his neck, one around his waist, and one around his ankles. Then he sticks me a bodkin through his tongue." A groan of admiration from his audience. "Then they dig, before his very eyes, a grave,—shallow enough they make it, too,—and they put into it, uncoffined, with only a long white shroud upon him, the man he murdered. Then they cover the grave. You're sitting ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... concubines, by which they say he hath fourescore or fourescore and ten children. He sitteth in iudgement almost euery day. [Sidenote: Paper of the leaues of a tree.] They vse no speech, but giue vp their supplications written in the leaues of a tree with the point of an yron bigger then a bodkin. These leaues are an elle long, and about two inches broad; they are also double. He which giueth in his supplication, doth stand in a place a little distance off with a present. If his matter be liked of, the king accepteth of his present, and granteth his request: if his sute he not liked of, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... footman, who was a stout fellow, and well armed, I myself being provided with a brace of good pistols, which I was fully determined to use against any person who should presume to lay violent hands upon me, except my lord, for whom a less mortal weapon would have sufficed, such as a bodkin or a tinder-box. Nothing could be farther from my intention than the desire of hurting any living creature, much less my husband: my design was only to defend myself from cruelty and oppression, which I knew, by fatal experience, would infallibly be my lot, should ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... perfectly serious. If he lost Gwen, he would be virtually non-existent already. The end would have come, and the thing left to put an end to would no longer be a Life. It would only be a sensibility to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin would do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right proportion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... were reduced to the form of slender filaments, shreds, rods, splints, yarn, twine and sennit or braid. All textile work was done by hand; the only devices known were the bark peeler and beater, the shredder, the flint-knife, the spindle, the rope-twister, the bodkin, the warp- beam and the most primitive harness. The processes involved were gathering the raw material, shredding, splitting, gauging, wrapping, twining, spinning and braiding. Twining and spinning were done ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... allowed us but half a pound of bread a man in a day, without any other kind of sustenance, water excepted. And when we came to the place where we saw the carmosel, we were not suffered to have neither needle, bodkin, knife, or any other instrument about us, nor at any other time in the night, upon pain of one hundred bastinadoes: we were then also cruelly manacled, in such sort that we could not put our hands the length of one foot asunder the ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... them, alive or dead, as he had to go down the same afternoon to dine with my Lord Duke, no less. I convinced him, that if I was to sit up all night, he could get them by five next morning, if that would do, as I would keep my laddie, Tammy Bodkin, out of his bed; but no—I thought he would have jumped out of his seven senses. "Just look," he said, turning up the inside seam of the leg—"just see—can any gentleman make a visit in such things as these? ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... This became in English etwee, or twee, e.g., Cotgrave explains estui (etui) as "a sheath, case, or box to put things in; and (more particularly) a case of little instruments, as sizzars, bodkin, penknife, etc., now commonly termed an ettwee." Such a case generally opens book-fashion, each half being fitted with instruments. Accordingly we find it called a surgeon's "pair of twees," or simply tweese, and later ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... besides this, which I know to have been imitated by some in France, when I came from that famous assembly of the Estates at Blois, I had a little before seen a maid in Picardy, who to manifest the ardour of her promises, as also her constancy, give herself, with a bodkin she wore in her hair, four or five good lusty stabs in the arm, till the blood gushed out to some purpose. The Turks give themselves great scars in honour of their mistresses, and to the end they may the longer remain, they presently clap ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... the bonds of iniquity on the soul of my child?' Postage-stamps and postmarks and an old envelope! The triviality of the things as compared with the importance of everlasting life made her feel that they were unworthy to be even noticed. It did not occur to her that the presence of a bodkin might be ample evidence of murder. Post-marks indeed,—when her daughter's everlasting life was the matter in question! Then they told her of Dick Shand. She, too, had heard of Dick Shand. He had been a gambler. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Bodkin" :   hairpin, hand tool, sticker, dagger, threader



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