/ · 1894 Brewer’s · C · Calf-skin
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Fools and jesters used to wear a calf-skin coat buttoned down the back. In allusion to this custom, Faulconbridge says insolently to the Archduke of Austria, who had acted most basely to Richard Cœur-de-Lion—
“Thou wear a lion’s hide! Doff it, for shame,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs.”
Shakespeare: King John, iii. 1.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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