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

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

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