BODKIN • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Bodkin

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/bˈɑdkɪn/ Listen

noun

Bodkin n.

A dagger. (Obs.) "When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin."

(Needlework) An implement of steel, bone, ivory, etc., with a sharp point, for making holes by piercing; a stiletto; an eyeleteer.

(Print.) A sharp tool, like an awl, used for picking out letters from a column or page in making corrections.

A kind of needle with a large eye and a blunt point, for drawing tape, ribbon, etc., through a loop or a hem; a tape needle. "Wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye."

A kind of pin used by women to fasten the hair.

To sit bodkin, To ride bodkin, or To travel bodkin, to sit closely wedged between two persons. (Colloq.)

Bodkin n. See Baudekin. (Obs.)

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Etymology of 'Bodkin'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Bodkin" Quotes from Famous Books

... wonder of the transportation world, the winged victory of the roads. Don't let your head swell, James. Better keep it solid bone than have it turn into a toy balloon; because the latter can be pricked with a bare bodkin." ...

— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... returned. She had covered her white dress with a mantle of brown linen and over her head she wore a wimple of the same material. Her hair had been coiled and secured with a bodkin. When she put her hand under the wimple and drew it across her mouth, only her fair skin and blue eyes distinguished her from any other Egyptian lady ...

— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... few weeks since that you remained a day behind your time when you were on leave. But Sir Boreas has taken the matter up, and I have nothing to say to it. No doubt Sir Boreas will send for you." Sir Boreas Bodkin was that great Civil servant in the General Post Office whom men ...

— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... magic of her touch behold Transformed at once the warlike aims of old! The mighty falchion to a penknife shrinks, The mailed meshes from the purse's links; The sturdy lance a bodkin now appears, A bunch of tooth-picks once a hundred spears; A painted toy behold the keen-edged axe! See men of iron turned ...

— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone

... taken out a screw from the angle where they had first heard the noise, found in a hole in the wall some feathers, three bones wrapped up in a dirty piece of linen, some bits of glass, and a hair-pin, or bodkin. He blessed a fire which they lighted, and had all that thrown into it. But this monk had hardly reached his convent when one of the printers came to tell him that the bodkin had come out of the flames three times of itself, and that a boy who was holding a pair of tongs, and who ...

— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

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