woodenadj.

1614 J. Sylvester Parl. Vertues Royall 705 A skilfull Pilot,..Her winged manage rightly to command With hempen Rains, and wooden Bridle.

1685 in Roxburghe Ballads (1885) V. 606 To be pelted with Eggs thro' a lewd wooden-casement.

1676 Poor Robins Intelligence 4 Apr. 2/1 We hear of none this bout that are to wear the Wooden Crevat.

1917 A. G. Empey Over Top 314 Wooden Cross, two pieces of wood in the form of a cross placed at the head of a Tommy's grave.

1919 in Amer. Speech 1972 (1975) 47 117 Seven of the ‘Blue Tails’ went down to get their Wooden Crosses.

1949 A. Murphy To Hell & Back xvi. 195 There is no other branch of the army that offers so many chances for the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Wooden Cross, the Royal Order of the Mattress Covers.

1683 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises II. Pref. 1 Cutting their Letters upon Blocks in whole Pages or Forms, as among us our Wooden Pictures are Cut.

1691 A. Wood Athenæ Oxonienses I. 31 Printed from a Wooden Cut the Picture of a Bear baited by six Dogs.

1706 T. Hearne Remarks & Coll. 25 Feb. (O.H.S.) I. 194 Raphael, a Wooden Print.

1770 P. Luckombe Conc. Hist. Printing 92 Elegant initial letters, and fine wooden cuts.

1837 H. Hallam Introd. Lit. Europe I. ix. 644 Otto Brunfels of Strasburg..published..a..work..in three volumes folio, with 238 wooden cuts of plants.

1848 J. R. Lowell Fable for Critics (ed. 2) 1596 (note) Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.]

1589 ‘Marphoreus’ Martins Months Minde sig. F2 The woodden dagger may not bee worne at the backe, where S. Paules sword, hangs by the side.

a1616 W. Shakespeare Henry V (1623) iv. iv. 68 This roaring diuell i'th olde play [sc. Pistol], that euerie one may payre his nayles with a woodden dagger . View more context for this quotation

a1625 J. Fletcher Noble Gentleman v. i, in F. Beaumont & J. Fletcher Comedies & Trag. (1647) sig. Ff2/2 According to his merits he should weare, A guarded coate, and a great wooden dagger.

1761 T. Forrest Ways to kill Care Ded. p. ii Where to find a guardian for the bawling brat, in case papa..should suddenly tumble into his wooden doublet.

1808 T. Ashe Trav. Amer. 1806 III. 310 Wooden Islands, are places, where..large quantities of drift-wood have..been arrested and matted together in different parts of the river.

1603 H. Chettle Englandes Mourning Garment sig. E 3 The inhabitants of those wooden Iles, are worthy Sea-men.

1926 G. H. Maines & B. Grant Wise-crack Dict. 15 * Wooden kimona, case for cold storage.

1946 M. Mezzrow & B. Wolfe Really Blues ii. 19 I expected the man to turn up..with his tape measure to outfit me with a wooden kimono.

1582 Aldeburgh Rec. in Notes & Queries 12th Ser. VII. 366/2 P^d to ye Joyner for a wooden Legge..xviii^d.

1664 T. Killigrew Parsons Wedding i. iii, in Comedies & Trag. 81 She hates a man with all his Limbs; a Wooden-leg, a Crutch..wins her heart.

1668 R. Steele Husbandmans Calling (1672) i. 7 Every man should be of some use in the body politick..else he is but an artificial member, a meer wooden leg.

1709 R. Steele Tatler No. 48. ⁋2 I was the old Soldier who..pretended that I had broken my Wooden-Leg.

1728 E. Chambers Cycl. at Chamois Leather They [sc. skins] are..laid on a wooden Leg, or Horse.

1887 W. Besant World went very well Then I. ii. 38 His right leg had been lost in action, and was replaced by a wooden leg.

1892 W. Crookes tr. R. von Wagner Man. Chem. Technol. viii. 883 This operation is carried on upon the tanner's ‘wooden leg’, the hide being placed with the hair-side downwards.

1819 W. Scott Legend of Montrose vi, in Tales of my Landlord 3rd Ser. IV. 122 He had an hour's ride on the wooden mare for his pains.

1830 W. Scott Old Mortality i, in Tales of my Landlord (new ed.) II. 18 The punishment of riding the wooden mare was..one of the..cruel modes of enforcing military discipline.

1915 C. Mathewson Catcher Craig ii. 25 He was instructed..not to take any wooden money.

1922 S. Lewis Babbitt v. 67 S'long! Don't take any wooden money.

1971 F. P. Grove Tales from Margin 27 ‘Well,’ said Walt, ‘be good, fellah! Don't take any wooden money!’ Even this cheap vulgarity irritated her now.

1927 Amer. Speech 3 132 [College slang.] Not to ‘take any wooden nickels’, in other words, to be alert.

1937 L. Hellman Diary 23 Oct. in Unfinished Woman (1969) viii. 100 Luis and I got to Madrid. He said I was not to take any wooden nickels.

1964 in C. Hamblett & J. Deverson Generation X 90 Then one night I met Johnny, one of the biggest sharks in the Mayfair aquarium, and that was the end of that. Nobody ever sold Johnny a wooden nickel.

1971 ‘M. Torrie’ Bismarck Herrings ii. 29 Having advised her..not to accept any wooden nickels, [he] drove back.

1971 R. Dentry Encounter at Kharmel iii. 58 There hadn't been a tribal rising worth a wooden nickel since the Partition troubles died down.

1822 N. Amer. Rev. Oct. 344 The Boston folks are sharp indeed..he expected every moment to see the dogs pull out a bag of wooden nutmegs.

1830 J. Galt Lawrie Todd I. ii. i. 90 ‘I reckon, Squire Lawrie,’ said he [sc. a Vermont farmer], ‘is a puffing of a parley voo, but I sells no wooden nutmegs.’

1836 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker 1st Ser. viii. 26 That etarnal scoundrel, that Captain John Allspice of Nahant, he..carried a cargo once..of fifty barrels of nutmegs: well, he put half a bushel of good ones into each eend of the barrel, and the rest he filled up with wooden ones... Says he [sc. General Cuffy], there's one manufacture that might stump all Europe to produce the like. What's that? says I... Why, says he, the facture of wooden nutmegs; that's a cap sheef that bangs the bush—its a real Yankee patent invention.

1849 H. D. Thoreau Week Concord & Merrimack Rivers 101 There are new and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to be for the elevation of the race, which many a pure scholar and genius..is..deceived by, and finds himself reading a horse-rake, or spinning jenny, or wooden nutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar,..perchance, when he was seeking serene and biblical truths.

1871 M. S. De Vere Americanisms 620 In the press and Congress wooden nutmegs have to answer for forged telegrams, political tricks, and falsified election-returns.

1890 Scots Observer 18 Jan. What should he do with a thesis? What he really wants is a wooden nutmeg or a razor-strop.

1898 Argosy Sept. 287 I'll bet you a last year's almanac against a wooden nutmeg that I can go as straight to the bottom as you can.

1900 E. Gregory Ways of Men iv. 32 Our grandfathers contributed the wooden nutmeg to civilization, and endowed a grateful universe with other money-saving devices.

1918 Mississippi Valley Hist. Rev. 5 155 One writer states that all the ‘tin-wagon, pit-coal-indigo, wooden-nutmeg, and wooden-clock’ peddlers of Connecticut..had suddenly turned into book agents.

1982 Christian Sci. Monitor 18 Mar. 22 Hong Kong robots..will produce our goods, which we will merely advertise and distribute–a nation of Yankee pedlars marketing wooden nutmegs made in Taiwan.

2001 Edmonton Sun 14 Apr. 11 Together, the federal Liberals and Canadian Alliance MPs have been asking us this week to accept a wooden nutmeg the size of a bungalow.

1860 G. Bennett Gatherings of Naturalist in Austral. xvii. 322 The Wooden Pear-tree of the colonists..is peculiar to Australia.

1889 J. H. Maiden Useful Native Plants Austral. 615 Xylomelum pyriforme..Native Pear. Wooden Pear.

1607 R. C. tr. H. Estienne World of Wonders 299 Woodden shoes properly called sabots.

1701 D. Defoe True-born Englishman i. 19 Two hundred thousand Pair of Wooden Shooes, Who, God be thank'd, had nothing left to lose.

1716 J. Addison Drummer Prol. sig. A4 Round-heads and Wooden-shooes are standing Jokes.

1766 O. Goldsmith Vicar of Wakefield I. xix. 207 What, give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazetteer says, lie down to be saddled with wooden shoes!

1807 ‘P. Plymley’ Three More Lett. on Catholics iii. 8 He calls all hands upon deck; talks to them of King, country, glory, sweethearts, gin, French prison, wooden shoes, Old England, and hearts of oak.

1817 W. Scott Rob Roy I. ix. 210 King William..our immortal deliverer from papists and pretenders, and wooden shoes and warming pans.

1859 W. S. Coleman Our Woodlands 62 In France great numbers of the peculiar wooden shoes, called ‘sabots’, are made of Alder.

1803 Gradus ad Cantabrigiam 137 Wooden Spoon, for wooden heads:..the lowest of the Junior Optimes.

1821 Ld. Byron Don Juan: Canto III cx. 63 Sure my invention must be down at zero, And I grown one of many ‘wooden spoons’ Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please To dub the last of honours in degrees).

1858 Earl of Malmesbury Mem. Ex-Minister (1884) II. 127 The ‘wooden spoon’ which is given to the Minister in the House of Commons who has been in the fewest divisions.

1883 in Standard 20 June 2/7 There was no opposition to the presentation of the time-honoured ‘Wooden Spoon’.

1900 Westm. Gaz. 19 Mar. 8/2 The international matches..have now all been played,..Ireland, who won the championship last year..have only 1 point, and take the ‘wooden spoon’.

1954 J. H. Fingleton Ashes crown Year 275 Somerset were wooden-spooners last summer and will be so again.

1973 Nation Rev. (Melbourne) 31 Aug. 1442/3 4BH slips to fourth place in the five station market, with perennial wooden spooners, 4BK, only 2000 listeners behind.

1927 Daily Express 23 Mar. 13/3 Champions and wooden spoonists of the Isthmian League last season were opposed on the Civil Service ground at Chiswick.

1975 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 26 May s5/1 England won the British soccer championship..with Wales, once again the wooden spoonists.

1981 Daily Mail 25 Nov. 30 (heading) A flat rate from the wooden spoonists.

1968 W. Garner Deep, Deep Freeze xx. 188 Any mistake on his part could win him the prize of the wooden suit.

1972 J. S. Hall Sayings from Old Smoky 42 When a guy comes and steals my stuff, he better be ready for a wooden suit or Boot Hill.